Life’s little elephants

I am sitting in the garden of my house. The house has grown, as has the family. Tosca, Plinth and Pliny play in front of me. Pliny in the paddling pool, Tosca on her swing and Plinth. Well, Plinth is riding astride a miniature elephant, not one of ours, a visiting mini elephant. Shannon is elsewhere, garden gnome shopping with John, who’s an expert on these things. I light a cigarette, something I’m not supposed to do in front of the children, but this is something of an exception.

I ignore Pliny’s excited screams and splashes, Tosca’s squeaks and swooshes, and concentrate my mind on the significance of the elephant that Plinth rides. I stare into the smoke emerging from my mouth, hoping to step through it into the time portal of memory.

My first encounter with the miniature elephants was on a Sunday afternoon in Paris when I was 18. A fine day, like today. I had, as was obligatory in those days, a young proletarian girl on my arm, Kirsty I think her name was. This was during my gap year, Kirsty and I did Europe for 6 months, hitching, sleeping in tents and hostels, occasionally working. The usual thing.

Paris was her suggestion. The romance of youth. My suggestion was that while there we should visit the Pierre Le Chaise cemetery, ‘home’ to Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde, compulsory idols for a young rebel at that time. It made a pleasant afternoon stroll, grim though a graveyard is in principal, the stones were decorated as if to say ‘this person lived’ rather than the grey English graves that say ‘these people have died’.

While Kirsty ran frantically round the cemetery in search of a public toilet I took up vigil at Oscar Wilde's tomb. In those days Wilde’s grave attracted the attentions of Morrissey fans and was consequently covered in gladioli and daffodils, a frenzy of straightforward English colour.

The miniature elephants passed me as I sat there, looking at my watch, waiting for Kirsty. Six of them altogether. I looked at that them with some confusion, sure what they were but wondering at the same time. ‘These don’t exist, surely’. They were, I’d say, about badger sized, bigger than a cat but smaller than a Labrador. They were, elephants in every other respect bar their size, complete with trunk, heavy grey bodies and inappropriately unsubstantial tail. Scaled down, perfect working replicas.

The day stopped; what had been a busy popular cemetery suddenly became empty and quite, there was just me and the elephants. I sat on Wilde’s tomb, mopping off the sweat of the day, watching the slow, deliberate trudge and crunch of miniature elephants through undergrowth. They seemed to ignore me at first, marching from tomb to tomb, locked together trunk to tail, a surreal procession towards wherever it is elephants go. As they passed in front of me however they stopped, just for an instant, and I knew.

I lit a cigarette as I watched them disappear into the distance and waited for Kirsty to return, pondering my newly acquired chain of thoughts. When I saw her, smiling manically and apologising wildly for taking so long, I broke her flow by telling her it was over between us. I didn’t mention the elephants, there didn’t seem any point, and I wasn’t sure she’d understand. She burst into tears, as Kirsties do, and demanded whys, whens and hows, reassurance (was it) that there was no-one else.

Shortly afterwards we left Paris, in muted mood. The next month I started university and never saw Kirsty again. Funny how elephants can come between people.

The second time I saw the elephants was just after graduating, when I was busy touting myself round potential employers all over London. I had moved down to follow my girlfriend, who’d graduated the year before. She was already settled into a job with prospects at one of the big insurance companies.

She was cooking pasta in the kitchen while I amused myself in the lounge, flicking through her magazine collection, Cosmopolitan, etc. Looking up from Cosmo I became aware of a new presence in the room, a shadow catching my eye perhaps, or an unexpected footfall.

I saw it underneath the TV, a miniaturised elephant, scaled down precisely from the normal size, trunk twice the length of each leg, etc. It was looking at a full-sized lettuce on the floor between us, something else I must have overlooked. Tentatively it lifted it’s clumsy frame towards the green round globe, grasped it with its trunk, waved the lettuce tantalisingly in front of its own eyes, as if to confirm that yes it was indeed a lettuce, before shoving it all into its now open and giant mouth. I watched in wonder at its tiny crunching frame, imagining how easily a herd of these creatures would munch their way through a field of lettuces in no time at all.

I felt I had to ask Shannon about the elephant. “I didn’t know you had one of these,” I offered tentatively into the kitchen.

She ignored the words but, attracted by my noise, came in, knife and courgette in hand. I turned to point out the elephant, but it had gone, munching noise and all. Suddenly I understand.

“Tim,” she said, “there’s something I’ve got to tell you,” a great weight falling from her mind as she spoke. “I’m pregnant”. The courgette and knife dropped to the ground amid floods of tears.

Overwhelmed by the news I forgot to ask about the elephant. I lit a fag (Shannon didn’t usually allow it in the house but we both knew this was an exception) and thought about things, just for a second, before making up my mind and kissing her. “Great,” I said, “but don’t burn the pasta”. ]

We went into the kitchen together and finished cooking together, away from the elephant. After we’d eaten we ran into the bedroom, in frantic urge to consummate this new stage of our relationship.

Seven months later Tosca was born, then a tiny dot of a girl, a miniature of what she is now, eight and screaming as she swings, showing off to her younger sisters. Hard to believe now that until that afternoon she’d never been so much as conceived, well conceived yes, obviously, but not conceived of by me. She existed but not in my mind, at least not until the elephant came and then I knew. I could see my bachelor life being eaten away even as the elephant munched. I had, by careless accident, become a man. Then, months later, there I was in hospital, by Shannon’s side, as Tosca screamed her way out. With one final push I became a father. I went outside, where my own father waited, and shared celebratory cigars. Mother looked on; critically but proud. We didn’t usually, but on such an occasion you have to, as dad explained.

The last time I saw the miniature elephants was shortly after we’d moved to our house, where we still live, in Ealing. I was painting the spare room, Shannon was reading Tosca her bedtime story. She was three now, bigger but still small, big enough to cause trouble, small enough to cause trouble. It was a fine summer’s evening, still light at nine, hence Tosca was playing up and protesting that she wasn’t tired through dropping eyelids and stifled yawns. I had the easy job, meditative release from the strains of the day, just pushing the brush up and down the wall, watching the scene change slowly from the faded grey of an abandoned house to the bright blue of a new start, a young family.

My eye wandered to the window. I could see Tosca’s swing in the back garden, swaying very slightly in summer breeze. I went over to look more closely, like a king surveying his domain, wallowing in the power of my new territory, my new position as head of a household. I thought nothing of a shadow underneath the swing, until I saw it move. It moved in a line, one shadow after the other, trunks tied to tails. Six shadow shapes, sized and structured like the miniature elephants they were. I stood and stared, paintbrush dripping carelessly onto the floorboard. Then it hit me.

No sooner had my mind become aware than the phone rang. I answered it, knowing the conversation before it happened.

“Tim, it’s me,” said my father, voice quaking with emotion. “It’s your mother, you'd better come to the hospital now.” He paused here to cry, the only time I remember hearing my father crying. Amid sobs he managed to describe which hospital and ward, and ended the conversation with an ominous “You’d better hurry”.

I answered with a reassurance, a farewell and the click of phone on receiver. I lit a fag, deciding what to do. I phoned John, who lives round the corner, ask if he’d mind some emergency baby sitting, Shannon would want to be there I decided. Outside the house, standing by the car with nervous cigarette in hand, I could see no trace of mini elephants. I saw Shannon kissing John, a hasty thank you, as she checked her bag for keys and essentials. We drove off, leaving John in charge of my domain.

I am sitting in the garden of my house. It is five years since my mother died. The house has grown, as has the family. Tosca, Plinth and Pliny play in front of me. Pliny in the paddling pool, Tosca on her swing and Plinth. Well, Plinth is riding astride a miniature elephant, not one of ours, a visiting mini elephant. Shannon is elsewhere, garden gnome shopping with John, who’s an expert on these things. I light a cigarette, something I’m not supposed to do in front of the children, but this is something of an exception.

Through the mist of cigarette smoke I expect to be able to make sense of the situation, but for once nothing comes. This elephant I cannot explain, this elephant makes no sense. Plinth, however, is in her element, promoted by the elephant’s lift to (in a child’s eyes) gigantum height, towering now above the splashing Pliny like a Queen looking down on a peasant. Still nothing.

I lay back to bask in the pleasant Saturday afternoon sun, a happy family man with a rich, happy family, three children, garden gnome on the way. This time, I realise, the elephant means nothing, it is just an elephant. The other elephants meant nothing either. I finish my cigarette and smile. I realise that the elephant is not the portent of loss I had once believed. Plinth, as if in agreement, screams with pleasure. She looks at me, making sure I’m looking at her. “Can I keep it dad?” she asks innocently, unaware that it’s impossible to keep mythological beasts. I nod affirmation. Life on an elephant suits her.