The Elephant of Belfast

by S. Kirk Walsh

  Hettie hesitated.

  “Really, Hettie. Trust me.”

  Hettie looked up at Liam: His calm chestnut eyes and his subdued smile seemed to provide Hettie with her only possibility of hope and safety. She handed the weapon over to Liam, and he stowed it in the pocket of his jacket.

  The three of them continued down the street in silence. The smell of burning still hung in the air. They passed several more homes that had been diminished to powdery mounds of detritus. Almost every surface of the neighborhood was coated in shifting layers of ash, dust, and grime, as if this place now existed in an ancient time. Personal effects were scattered here and there: a toothbrush, a doll with rosy cheeks and red lips, a Bible with its torn, gold-leafed pages ruffling in the breeze. Ahead, next to an upside-down dustbin, was a woman’s blue leather purse with its contents spilled onto the curb. Violet reached for the handle of the purse with the end of her trunk and lifted it up, causing the rest of its contents to fall onto the road. Coins, hairpins, a fountain pen, and a linen handkerchief. Violet shook the purse as if she was looking for something.

  “Vi, leave it alone,” Liam said.

  Strangely, it appeared that Violet had already grown accustomed to Liam and his low-pitched voice. Violet dropped the purse onto the small pile of rubble. As she walked along, the elephant’s tail twitched from side to side, swatting away a fly.

  Liam led them through the hazy maze of streets until they were walking along a road that hugged the shoreline. The port of Belfast and the enormous skeleton-like cranes of Harland & Wolff were visible in the distance. To Hettie, it felt as if it had been several years since Violet’s auspicious arrival at the port, even though only seven months had passed since her walk up the Antrim Road.

  “Do you think Éamon will call in at the zoo and speak to the constable there?”

  “Don’t worry about him,” Liam said. “Éamon’s harmless.”

  “He didn’t seem harmless.”

  “Believe me, he won’t be calling in at any zoo. He’s in serious trouble with the law himself. If he calls, his arse will be thrown in jail for a very long time. That’s why I thought we could count on him to help us.”

  “What did he do?”

  “It’s up here,” Liam said, picking up his pace. “Across the road.”

  Liam turned left and walked across the two-way street. There was a large wooden gate with an iron knocker in the middle and a doorbell to one side; it appeared to be the entrance to a compound surrounded by a brick wall with tight circles of wire ringing its top edge. There was no sign, no indication of who might reside on the other side of the wall. Hettie worried that it was the address of another one of Liam’s IRA colleagues, and that more chaos and fighting would ensue.

  All at once she yearned to return home again. She imagined there was a good chance that the constable and his men had already come and gone. Maybe Ferris was now looking for her and Violet, too. Maybe he had run into Samuel Greene again, and he had told Ferris what had happened, that she was looking for a better place to hide Violet until the danger of the constable had subsided. Then, she could go and search for her mother again. She wished more than ever for Ferris’s steady presence and trouble-free smile.

  Hettie stared up the forested hillside toward the Antrim Road and the zoo. Threads of smoke hovered over the neighborhood. Violet clomped along the pavement. Somewhere in the gray overcast sky a low droning sound emerged. Liam looked up, too. For a moment, Hettie felt certain that parachute bombs would begin floating down, hundreds upon hundreds of them, silvery teardrops accenting the brightening sky, looking innocuous at first but soon delivering another round of massive destruction on her beloved city. She knew this wasn’t a rational thought: The Germans attacked only during darkness, never during broad daylight, but she was certain that she heard the sound of an aircraft. It struck her that it was probably on reconnaissance, assessing the damage that the Luftwaffe raid had caused and identifying what targets had been hit. But Hettie also recognized that some degree of her rationality was leaving her, that she was now making decisions from a place deep inside her that she didn’t even know existed twenty-four hours ago. The drone of the plane grew louder.

  “Come on,” Liam said, ringing the bell a second time. “Be here. You need to be here.”

  Eleven

  THE LARGE DOOR SLOWLY OPENED, AND HETTIE WAS SURPRISED to see a pair of elderly nuns dressed in powder-blue habits and white caps step out to meet them. One was short and rotund, and wore silver-rimmed glasses, the lenses perfectly circular like the narrow mouth of a glass bottle. A few black hairs stippled her double chin. The other nun was tall and angular, her cheekbones high and pronounced. A crucifix hung around her neck.

  “Liam Patrick Keegan, what are you doing here?” exclaimed the short, bespectacled nun. “I thought you were in Newcastle with your mother and the baby. Is everyone all right? Don’t tell me the Germans attacked Newcastle, too.”

  “Who do we have here?” the taller nun asked, staring at Hettie and Violet.

  Hettie patted Violet’s flank, feeling the elephant’s stiff bristles spring underneath her fingertips.

  “I have a favor to ask, Sister Helen,” Liam said.

  “What is it this time, Liam Patrick?” she said, her hands perched on her hips.

  “Let me introduce you,” he said. “This is Hettie Quin.”

  “Anna’s younger sister,” said the taller nun, peering at Hettie.

  Liam turned his attention to the elephant. “And this is Violet,” he said.

  “Well, I suppose you ought to step inside,” Sister Helen said, opening the gate wider so they could walk through the oversize entrance. “It’s been a bit mad around here—and I don’t want your elephant to get hit by a speeding lorry.”

  “What a truly awful attack. I wouldn’t want to live through another night like that again,” the other nun said. “We spent the whole night on our knees in the chapel, but there was no damage here, not even a window was broken. Dei gratia.”

  When they were all safely inside the courtyard, Sister Helen closed and locked the gate behind them, and Hettie looked around. Just as the nun had said, within the walls of the expansive compound, it looked as if the bombing of the city had never taken place. The pristine courtyard led into a second courtyard, one curved arch answering another, with a series of low-lying gray stone buildings making up the cloistered area. At the rear of the second courtyard, the white steeple of a chapel rose toward the overcast sky. Well-manicured flower beds hugged the walls with vines of blooming morning glories crawling skyward. A large wooden crucifix hung on the side of one of the structures. A fountain—with a statue of Mary standing at its center—gurgled in the middle of the flagstone courtyard. A flock of barn sparrows fluttered in the shallow basin of water, and one of the birds rested in Mary’s open palm.

  “There we go,” Sister Helen said, pushing her sleeves around her dimpled elbows. “Now, tell us what this is all about.”

  “I have to say this is the first time we’ve been honored to have an elephant as a guest,” said the other nun.

  “We’re a convent, Sister Evangeline,” Sister Helen said. “Not a stable.”

  “Yes, Sister Helen,” Sister Evangeline said with a smile, “but we all know God comes in all shapes and sizes.”

  As they stood there, a few other nuns emerged from the buildings and the outlying pathways, their feet shuffling under the floor-length hems of their powder-blue habits.

  “We’re waiting, Liam Patrick,” Sister Helen said, her voice stern. “What’s your story this time—”

  “Hettie works up at the zoo,” Liam said. “You might have remembered me talking about her before we left for Newcastle. She is the only female zookeeper.”

  The fact that Liam had previously mentioned Hettie and her work at the zoo to the nuns produced a small degree of pleasure in Hettie. She did exist within his orbit.

  “Well done,” Sister Helen said, her eyes reflecting both warmth and
scrutiny. “God knows we need more women to lead us these days. Look at the mess the world is in, and it’s all because of men—Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, and, nearer home, Craigavon. They’re brutal, insensitive, arrogant. They never go down on their knees and pray, and consider the will of God, or think how what they’re doing will affect the women, their sisters, wives and mothers, and the wee children.”

  “Violet is one of Hettie’s charges at the zoo,” Liam continued. “This morning, Andrews ordered all of the dangerous animals be executed, in the event their cages get bombed and they escape.”

  “What does that man know, he’s an old fool,” Sister Helen tutted, glancing at Liam and then turning her attention to Violet. “And what would you like us to do with Violet here?”

  Now there was an edge in her voice. Hettie couldn’t tell how Sister Helen felt about the presence of Violet in the convent’s courtyard—whether she was thrilled by this peculiar turn of events or found the situation objectionable. Sister Helen examined the elephant carefully, walking a slow, wide circle around Violet. When she returned to her original spot next to Liam, she extended her hand and patted Violet on the forehead. The elephant swung her tail.

  “The constable and his men are looking for Violet right now because she’s on the government’s list to be shot,” Hettie explained further. “I need to hide her until she is no longer in danger.”

  During their exchange, ten, twenty, thirty women had gathered soundlessly around Liam, Sister Helen, Hettie, and Violet in the large courtyard. Many of their moonlike faces were pale and translucent, their silver and chestnut strands of hair tucked under the fitted folds of their white caps. Constellations of freckles punctuated their cheeks, foreheads, and chins, their eyes were reflective pools of blues and browns. They stared at Violet with a sense of wonderment and joy. An elephant! In the convent’s courtyard!

  Sister Evangeline reappeared from one of the buildings with something under her arm. As she drew closer, it became apparent that she was carrying a basket of small red apples. To Hettie, the fruit might as well have been gold. She hadn’t seen an apple in over a year; she had almost forgotten that they existed. She wondered how the nuns had managed to get hold of them.

  “Sister Helen, do you think we can spare one or two apples for our special visitor? Particularly since a few weeks ago we received a few bushels from our faithful church members.”

  Sister Helen narrowed her eyes. “One apple,” Sister Helen conceded. “That’s it, Linny.”

  “Here you go, lovely,” said Sister Evangeline, extending an apple to Violet.

  The elephant grabbed the apple nimbly with her trunk and placed it into the triangle of her mouth. Shreds of crisp flesh and red skin clung to the whiskers underneath her chin. Violet squeaked, and her ears flapped. Everyone laughed. Sister Evangeline tentatively reached her hand into the bushel again and offered one more apple to Violet as Sister Helen scowled at her. The elephant dropped the fruit into her mouth before brushing her trunk against Sister Evangeline’s arm.

  “She’s a good girl, isn’t she?” Sister Evangeline said fondly.

  “That’s enough, Linny,” Sister Helen said firmly.

  Hettie’s mouth started to water. A part of her wanted to reach into the basket and grab an apple for herself. She looked over at Liam. He pushed back a thick curl of his hair with the smooth base of his palm. Then Hettie felt an intense itch between her legs. Violet kicked against the ground and clouds of dust billowed around her feet. Several of the nuns stepped back, startled.

  “Hettie, make her stop that,” Liam whispered from the corner of his mouth. “We don’t want to upset Sister Helen.”

  Hettie rubbed Violet behind one of her ears. “You’re all right,” Hettie said to Violet. “You’re good.”

  As she rubbed behind Violet’s ear, the elephant surreptitiously curled the end of her trunk around another apple and dropped it into her mouth.

  “She’s a schemer, just like the rest of them,” another nun said.

  “Linny, please,” Sister Helen said sternly. “Put the apples away.”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “How long?” Sister Helen asked Liam, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

  “Until the constable stops looking for her,” Liam said. “Until she can return to the zoo safely.”

  “Days? Weeks?” she asked impatiently. “I need to know. We have only a limited amount of hay and we need it for the goats and pigs. I can’t be using our rationings on an uninvited guest who isn’t able to contribute to our community.”

  “Days. A week at the most,” Liam answered, glancing over at Hettie, who gave a small shrug.

  She hoped Liam was accurate in his assumption. After a few days, she hoped that the constable and his men would have more pressing concerns on their minds than executing a three-year-old elephant.

  “I’ll ask one of my mates to drop off a supply of hay,” Liam said. “I promise, Sister Helen.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard all this before,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Is baby Maeve baptized yet?”

  “Sister, you know it isn’t that simple,” Liam said.

  Hettie tried to decide what Anna would think if she saw Hettie and Violet and Liam surrounded by this growing group of nuns. She imagined that her sister would laugh and then make a half-hearted joke about how Hettie should have considered becoming a nun herself, how the measured regimen of prayer, work, and meals would have suited her tendency to habitual activities. Instead, Hettie had discovered this kind of routine and ritual at the zoo. As Hettie stared at Liam, she also recognized that this monastic way of life was out of the question because she was no longer a virgin.

  “She can stay in one of the empty stables,” Sister Helen said at last, and Hettie smiled a broad smile. “And Liam, make sure the additional hay is delivered tomorrow. Sister Linny, show Hettie and Violet to the empty stall in the barn.”

  Hettie grabbed the crop from Liam and followed Sister Evangeline before Sister Helen could change her mind. The crowd of nuns parted for Sister Evangeline, Hettie, and Violet as the three of them walked toward the stables at the rear of the compound. Hettie took in their faces as they walked by. She was surprised to see that many of the sisters looked around her age, most likely having gone straight from school to the convent. A few of the young women smiled and extended their hands as they walked by, and Violet’s trunk grazed their open palms.

  “She’s a beautiful specimen,” Sister Evangeline said, “though it looks like she hasn’t been eating enough.”

  “The rationings,” Hettie said in explanation, realizing that she herself hadn’t eaten since the evening of the bombing. Her stomach felt hollow like a deep, empty well.

  “Despite what Sister Helen said, we have a wee bit of extra hay that we can feed her. She’s always trying to make us believe that we have less than we do,” Sister Evangeline said. “I imagine Violet could use a good feeding.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Hettie said, unable to believe their luck that Liam had brought them here. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  As they turned down a dirt path into the second courtyard, Hettie noticed Sister Helen greeting at least dozen women and children at the convent’s front entrance. A young woman knelt before Sister Helen, her shoulders shaking, her dress soiled with dirt and blood. Sister Helen took the woman’s hand and guided her up to her feet.

  “Many others are coming to us for food and shelter,” Sister Evangeline said, noticing Hettie’s gaze.

  The nun paused for a moment with her head bent, and then traced the sign of the cross over her chest before leading Hettie and Violet to the rear area that housed a modest barnlike structure painted red with white trim, and a dusty yard of wandering chickens and goats.

  “Careful,” Sister Evangeline said, pointing to the cattle guard near the barn’s entrance.

  Hettie guided Violet over the parallel metal bars. The elephant seemed to know somehow that the guard was there and stepped gingerly across it. S
ister Evangeline slid open the large barn door with the entire weight of her body. The pigs snorted in the pen. Inside, short stacks of hay created a series of rectangular steps that led into the darkened shadows of the rafters. Sister Evangeline led them into a sizable stall located at the end of the musty corridor. Slants of daylight dappled the passageway.

  “Violet will be safe here for the time being,” Sister Evangeline said. “I assure you that the constable will not be stopping by here.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “Trust me,” said Sister Evangeline. “No RUC constable is likely to set foot in a Catholic convent.”

  The nun opened the wooden door to the stall, its rusty hinges creaking. Violet began to rear into Hettie, her large foot almost landing on Hettie’s foot.

  “Watch it,” Hettie said, tapping Violet lightly on the rear.

  Violet stepped into the stall and immediately grabbed a bundle of hay with the curl of her trunk and tossed it up onto her back, and then shuddered. Several strands of hay tumbled to the ground, but a loose net remained, like a broken crown resting on her forehead.

  “She looks like a queen,” Sister Evangeline said, laughing. “The queen of the Sisters of Adoration and Redemption. We’ve always needed a queen.”

  “How do Sister Helen and Liam know each other?” Hettie asked.

  “Sister Helen has known Liam since he was a wee boy. His father got into some trouble soon after his brother was shot, and needed to leave town. Mrs. Keegan fell gravely ill for a spell, so we took care of poor Liam until his father could return to Belfast,” Sister Evangeline said. “Then, as Liam got older, he became more involved with the cause, and now Sister Helen and Liam help each other in different ways.”

  Just then a pair of nuns walked toward them. “Our midday meal is now being served,” one of them announced.

  Sister Evangeline scattered handfuls of hay in front of Violet before securing the door of the stable.

  “She’ll be all right,” Sister Evangeline said. “Don’t you worry.”