Erica's Elephant

by Sylvia Bishop

  They shuffled inside, but Erica could not see a chair that wasn’t covered in piles of paper. The whole office was a mess.

  “Erica Perkins, isn’t it? I had that awful Avis woman tutting down the phone for hours about you. Your name rang a bell of course.” He smiled kindly, without really looking at them. He didn’t notice, for example, that the Elephant had quietly got stuck in the doorway, and was now trying to wriggle himself out backwards with as much dignity as possible.

  “Um. Really?” said Erica, baffled.

  “Yes, yes, of course. I remember drawing up the Licence. I must have forgotten to put it in the post. But I certainly wrote it.” The Elephant fell out of the door with a loud POP and rolled back into the corridor, where he stayed, looking sheepish. Bertram rambled on without noticing. “I know I did, because I did it while your uncle was still on the phone. He said to me that I mustn’t forget, that I had to do it RIGHT NOW! And I said he was a terrible fusspot. But I suppose he was right to worry.” And he chuckled as if this was quite a good joke.

  Erica stared at him. “You know Uncle Jeff?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Bertram. “We used to go birdwatching together. I haven’t the time for that now of course. Things to do.” And he waved his hand at the room full of paperwork, which as far as Erica could tell was spectacularly not being done.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Erica saw Miss Pritchett open her mouth to tell Bertram off. It looked like she was preparing for a long speech. Erica shot her a look that clearly said, Don’t you dare. Much as she wanted to scream in Bertram’s silly face for all the trouble his forgetfulness had caused, he didn’t look like he was used to being told off, and she wasn’t prepared to risk ruining this wonderful, magical chance. She could have a Licence. She could keep the Elephant. So she glared at Miss Pritchett, and Miss Pritchett pursed her lips and stayed quiet.

  Bertram took ten minutes to find the right form and five minutes to find a pen. At last, unbelievably, he had signed in all the right places, and Erica Perkins really did have a Licence for the Elephant. He handed it over as if it was just yesterday’s newspaper. “Can I help you with anything else, Erica? Your uncle was keen to know how you are doing.”

  Erica had a hundred questions. What did Uncle Jeff say? How on earth did you just forget my Licence? Do you know that policemen are locking up little girls and their friends in your name? But in that moment, all that came out was: “Why are you the Department for Exotic Animals and Hats?”

  Bertram smiled. He opened a tall cupboard behind the desk, and inside were the most awful hats you have ever seen. “Some people,” he explained, “wear truly terrible exotic hats. When I took this job, I added ‘and hats’ so that I could remove especially bad ones.”

  “Amy Avis has a horrible knitted polka-dot one. It looks like a tea cosy with measles,” Erica told him.

  “Is that so?” Bertram’s eyes twinkled. “Then I think I had better write her a rather stern letter. I don’t suppose she has a Licence for that hat.”

  “Forgive me for pointing out the elephant in the room,” cut in Miss Pritchett, “but – well – he isn’t, as it were. Shall we go and tell him the good news?” So they all hurried out to where the Elephant was waiting, looking rather sadly at the posters on the wall. Erica ran up and hugged his massive side.

  “Elephant! We got the Licence! You can stay!”

  The Elephant TRONKed a HOORAY. But it sounded a bit odd, as if he was also trying not to cry.

  “Elephant? What’s wrong?”

  He TRONKed breezily, as if to say “Oh, nothing”, but even Miss Pritchett and Bertram could tell that there certainly was a Something. Erica asked if it was his knee, or the shame of getting stuck in the door, but he shook his head. She looked hard into his eyes but she couldn’t think what it might be, and he kept trying to pretend he was all right.

  “Erica,” said Miss Pritchett quietly, “look at the poster.” Erica turned around, her back to the Elephant, and saw what he had been looking at. It was a picture of four elephants, three adults and a calf, standing in front of a dazzling pink sky. ORISSA, INDIA it said. Erica looked at those elephants in the magnificent sunset for a very long time. She thought about the soft greys of her stony beach, and plastic bags full of cabbage in the broken living room, and how lost the Elephant had looked on her doorstep next to the geraniums.

  “Elephant,” she said gently. “Do you want to come back with me?”

  He TRONKed, Of course, but a bit too loudly.

  “Elephant. If you could go back to India, would you prefer that?”

  The Elephant didn’t say anything, but looked from the poster to Erica and back again. His trunk waved in a confused sort of way.

  “We can arrange that,” said Bertram. “I have contacts at a reserve in Orissa. They could look after him and help him find a herd to stay with.”

  This seemed to confuse the Elephant even more. He shifted from foot to foot and looked pleadingly at Erica, as if he wanted her to decide.

  “It’s up to you,” she said, as steadily as she could. “You can live wherever you want. Really.”

  The Elephant paused. Then he wrapped his trunk around Erica in a crushing hug. TRONK, he said. And it was crystal clear to all three of them that he meant, I have to go home.

  So he did. They all went back to the house first, and Erica packed up the curtains from the unclejeffsroom for him in case he got cold (because she was a very practical girl, but she didn’t know very much about India). The evening before he left, he came to her room and placed a bag at the door with some bread, some crisps and an apple in it. TRONK, he said proudly.

  She smiled. “Dinner! Thank you.”

  Miss Pritchett came with them to see him off. He had a ticket for a boat leaving from Dover at 11.30 in the morning. They were early, so they bought some salty chips and ate them while they watched the sea go backwards and forwards. Soothing and familiar. Home – for Erica.

  At 11.25 they said their goodbyes, ignoring all the people who stopped to photograph a little girl tightly hugging an Elephant, whom she had a Right to, but loved too much to keep.

  “Goodbye, Elephant,” she said.

  TRONK, he replied, and it meant a great deal more than Erica could ever translate into words.

  I have just finished reading this to Miss Pritchett, and she got very cross with me. She is 103 years old now, and when she gets cross her face almost folds in on itself.

  “You can’t just stop there!” she said,

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because it isn’t The End,” she scolded me.

  I told her that nothing is ever really The End, and I had to stop the story somewhere. We argued about it for a while, and finally we agreed that I would tell you a little bit about what happened next in an Epilogue, which is a bit like a pudding – you don’t need it, but it finishes things off nicely.

  She is right that it wasn’t The End, of course. It was the last time I saw the Elephant. But I ended up studying zoology, and now I am a Professor and a leading expert on elephants, so in a way the Elephant was only The Beginning of that story. And I moved in with Miss Pritchett until I left for university, so thanks to the Elephant I made a very important friend. Uncle Jeff came home two years later. We built a door between the two houses and I went between them as I liked. So now I know everything there is to know about birds and ants and elephants.

  It wasn’t The End for the Elephant either. I suppose it was The Middle. Before coming to me he lived with his first herd in the wild, and then he gave rides in the city for a while. Then it was his brief spell in England, and finally he made it back to India and found a new herd. So living with me was just the jam in the middle of the cake. From what I know now, I would say he must have been about ten years old at the time, so he still had a good fifty or sixty more years of life ahead of him. It certainly wasn’t The End for his story either.

  But this isn’t the story of our whole lives. This is just the story of when a girl
got an elephant – or he got her – for a while. If you want to know the rest, you will have to go to Orissa and find the Elephant with the very slight limp, and ask him. I’m sure he will tell you the same thing that I will: that when you give all your heart to something or someone, that story never really ends, because it becomes part of you for ever. But for now – for our small story – this is:

  THE END.

  Facts about elephants

  At the end of the story, Elephant moves to India. Here are some facts about the elephants he could expect to meet there.

  •There are two types of elephant: the Asian elephant and the African elephant (Erica’s Elephant is an Asian elephant).

  •Elephants are the largest land animals in the world.

  •Elephants can’t jump!

  •An elephant can use its tusks to dig for ground water. An adult elephant needs to drink around 210 litres of water a day (a human only drinks around 2 litres a day).

  •An elephant uses its trunk to lift food and suck up water then pour it into its mouth. The trunk has more than 40,000 muscles in it.

  •Elephants prefer one tusk over the other – just like people are either right-handed or left-handed!

  •Elephants have large, thin ears which help them to cool down in hot climates.

  •Elephants can swim – they use their trunk to breathe like a snorkel in deep water.

  •Elephants use their feet to listen. Just like in the story, elephants can pick up rumblings made by other elephants through vibrations in the ground.

  •Elephants are herbivores (they don’t eat meat). They can spend up to 16 hours each day collecting leaves, twigs, bamboo and roots.

  •Elephants are very social creatures. They sometimes “hug” by wrapping their trunks together in displays of affection.

  •Elephants have greeting ceremonies when a friend who has been away for a long time returns to the group. That means Erica’s Elephant probably had a big welcome home party when he arrived back in India!

  Acknowledgements

  I am very lucky: a lot of brilliant people helped me with this book. In chronological order, my elephantine thanks go to:

  Dylan Townley, for sending a text message promising “an elephant festooned with tea” that tickled my imagination. The tea got lost along the way, but the Elephant stuck around and caused havoc. Alice Winn and Julie Sullivan, for giving me crucial encouragement and practical advice. The lovely Bryony Woods, for agreeing to be my agent despite the fact that I got lost on my way to our first meeting, and for being an Unstoppable Force ever since. The terrific team at Scholastic: particularly Lucy Richardson, Sean Williams and Pete Matthews. A large TRONK to Lucy Rogers, editor extraordinaire and fellow Hufflepuff, for all her hard work and support. Finally, special thanks to Ashley King for the joyful illustrations, and for drawing me my very own picture of Erica for Christmas.

  If I had a trunk, I would use it to try and hug all of you at once.

  Sylvia Bishop has recently graduated from Oxford. She performs comedy, and is one half of the musical double-act Peablossom Cabaret. Erica’s Elephant is her first book, and she intends it to be the first of many charming stories for young readers.

  Scholastic Children’s Books

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  First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2016

  This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2016

  Text copyright © Sylvia Bishop, 2016

  The right of Sylvia Bishop to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted by her.

  eISBN 978 1407 16830 2

  A CIP catalogue record for this work is available from the British Library.

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  Produced in India by Newgen

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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