The Runaways Read online

  ‘He had the handles raised and a bar put across the back so it’s easier for people of different heights to push it,’ AJ said.

  ‘And a harness so Noodle, my donkey, could pull it too,’ Yolanda added. ‘Not that he’s here to do any pulling now.’

  Although she missed Buttercup and Bluebell badly, she missed Noodle and his braying even more. But the army sergeant had said they needed him too and so off to war he’d gone shortly after the horses.

  ‘Well, someone had better think of something,’ Annie said. Even with the help of the Land Army girls, the farms were struggling to survive.

  Then, one morning in August, their dad was reading aloud to them from the newspaper about Lizzie, an elephant who worked in Sheffield.

  ‘Yesterday evening Lizzie was pulling the heavy factory cart when she saw a boy’s cap that she thought looked tasty, and quick as a wink the cap was gone …’

  ‘I wish we could have an elephant like Lizzie,’ ten-year-old AJ said with a laugh.

  ‘Me too,’ said Yolanda, as she poured more tea in her father’s cup.

  ‘Of course,’ their father said, slamming the newspaper down on the breakfast table. ‘That’s it!’

  ‘What’s it?’ Yolanda had asked, as AJ took a desperate swig of milk to wash away the piece of bread that he’d choked on in shock at the newspaper slamming.

  ‘The answer to our problem,’ their dad said as he looked over at AJ. ‘You OK?’

  AJ nodded and swallowed hard.

  ‘What’s the answer?’ asked Yolanda. Although she didn’t even know what the question was.

  ‘We’ll get an elephant of our own.’

  Yolanda and AJ looked at each other in amazement.

  ‘An elephant?’ AJ squeaked.

  ‘If it’s good enough for Sheffield, it’s good enough for us. It can do the heavy lifting work that the horses used to do and be a huge help to the farms and the forest. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. When your mother and I helped to run your grandad’s tea plantation in Ceylon, we saw adult elephants doing lots of different jobs.’

  ‘But how will we get an elephant?’ Yolanda asked. It wasn’t like they were growing on trees in the Lake District.

  Mr Jones tapped the newspaper on the table. ‘We’ll put an advert in the paper and see if anyone has one for sale,’ he said.

  And that’s what they did. And in fact not one but two circuses came forward. Mr Jones went with the one that would be in Cumbria the soonest because they didn’t want to wait too long.

  ‘We’re really, really getting an elephant?’ Yolanda said, in disbelief.

  ‘Yes,’ said her dad. ‘Her name’s Shanti, which means peaceful.’

  AJ hoped their elephant wouldn’t get too hungry and accidentally eat his cap like Lizzie had done – or other bits of him, come to that.

  The news of the elephant coming quickly spread throughout their village and the surrounding ones too.

  ‘Your dad’s crazy thinking an elephant can help us,’ said Joseph, who was in Yolanda and AJ’s class at the village school. Most of the other children agreed with him. ‘I don’t think my dad would think it was a very good idea.’

  AJ was about to tell Joseph he was wrong, but Yolanda gave him a nudge under the table. Joseph’s dad and older brother were fighting on the Western Front. AJ remembered their dad had said they had to be especially kind to anyone whose family members were fighting in the war.

  ‘I’m going to join the army too as soon as I’m old enough. As long as the war’s not over by then,’ Joseph continued, sounding a bit worried that it might be.

  Mr Soames, their teacher, heard him.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll make an excellent addition to any army, Joseph,’ he said wryly.

  Joseph sat up very tall on the long bench seat as if he were already imagining himself as a military man.

  ‘Did you hear about Mr Jones’s elephant, sir?’ he asked the teacher.

  ‘A whisper might have reached my ears. I think it’s reached just about everyone’s ears,’ Mr Soames said with a twinkle in his eye.

  ‘My mum says Mr Jones would be better off buying more crops and sheep and food for the tenant farmers than wasting it on a great beast that’ll probably trample us all to death while we sleep,’ said Mary.

  ‘Did she?’ Mr Soames said mildly, and he turned to the large globe on his desk. ‘Who can tell me where elephants come from?’

  ‘The circus?’

  ‘Travelling zoos?’

  ‘Where they originally come from?’ Mr Soames sighed.

  ‘Africa.’

  ‘Asia.’

  ‘India.’

  ‘Ceylon,’ AJ added, thinking about what his dad had told him.

  ‘And what’s the difference between an African and an Asian elephant?’ Mr Soames asked.

  ‘One of them’s got bigger ears, sir.’

  ‘Like you, Dobbin,’ said the boy next to him flicking his ear.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘The African does indeed have larger ears than the Asian elephant,’ said Mr Soames.

  ‘The Asian elephants are supposed to be a bit gentler,’ Yolanda said. ‘That’s what Dad told us.’

  ‘He also said they put strings of dried chillies near the crops to stop them getting eaten or trampled on by the elephants,’ said AJ. ‘Elephants hate chillies.’

  ‘What do elephants like to eat?’ Mr Soames asked everyone.

  ‘Vegetables and fruit.’

  ‘Schoolboys’ caps,’ AJ said, thinking of Lizzie the elephant.

  Mr Soames shook his head, smiling.

  ‘Peanuts.’

  ‘Our dad says that’s not true.’

  ‘And who knows how much they drink?’

  ‘A lot.’

  ‘One large bathtub full of water every day,’ said AJ.

  ‘No! They can’t,’ Joseph said.

  But Yolanda nodded. ‘Yes, they do. Elephants need to be near water because they need to bathe and drink a lot.’

  ‘How many children would you need if you had an elephant on one side of the scale and children on the other and you wanted it to balance?’

  ‘It’d be one huge scale.’

  ‘Indeed it would. One average Asian adult elephant weighs about eight hundred and sixty stone. If all the children, thirty of you, and teachers at this school stood on the scale they wouldn’t weigh as much as an elephant does.’

  ‘Wow – they’re so heavy.’

  AJ hoped their elephant never sat on him because he’d be squashed as flat as a pancake.

  ‘Did you know that men have used elephants in war since pre-Roman times?’

  ‘Why don’t they go to war now?’ Simon asked.

  ‘They could trample the Germans,’ said Daisy. ‘And then my dad could come home.’

  ‘Not much room for an elephant in a trench,’ Joseph said. ‘My dad says there’s not enough room to swing a cat in there.’

  AJ thought swinging a cat, whether there was a lot of room or not, was a very bad idea.

  ‘Who can tell me how long elephants live?’ Mr Soames asked.

  AJ and Yolanda looked at each other. Their dad hadn’t mentioned that.

  ‘Ten years?’ Daisy asked.

  Mr Soames shook his head. ‘Much longer.’

  ‘Thirty years,’ said Joseph. That seemed like a very long time.

  But Mr Soames shook his head again. ‘Much longer than thirty years.’

  ‘Sixty years?’ said Yolanda.

  ‘Longer still,’ said Mr Soames. ‘Elephants can live for seventy years or so.’

  ‘As long as people,’ AJ said.

  ‘Yes, and their babies are a lot like human babies too. They can’t eat solid food when they’re born. Elephants need their mother’s milk for at least the first three years of their lives. In lots of ways a two-year-old elephant is very much like a two-year-old child. Full of mischief, but still needing its mum to survive. And instead of sucking its thumb it sucks its trunk.’ br />
  For lunch the children had sausages in batter with potatoes and thick gravy.

  ‘Mmm … toad-in-the-hole,’ AJ said. It was his favourite.

  Yolanda pushed some of hers on to her friend Daisy’s plate when Mr Soames wasn’t looking, although they weren’t supposed to swap food. But Daisy was always hungry and so was her brother Simon.

  She gave AJ, who was sitting next to Simon, a pointed look.

  AJ looked down at his plate and pushed it away.

  ‘Too much for me,’ he said, as Simon quickly scraped the rest of AJ’s food on to his own plate.

  As soon as school was finally over for the day, Yolanda and AJ jumped off the hard wooden school benches and ran all the way home. In a few hours they’d have a real-life elephant at the farm, sleeping in their barn.

  Chapter 3

  Harvey rested his grey-whiskered muzzle on Albert’s knee, almost as if he sensed his friend’s sadness, and Albert stroked his furry head. Albert had found Harvey soaking wet in a hedgerow when he was just a small puppy. It had been Albert’s fifth birthday and his dad had been taking him into town for a birthday treat.

  ‘Hello, little puppy,’ he’d said, looking at the tiny dog that peeped up at him from amongst the leaves.

  ‘Can I keep him?’ Albert had asked his dad. ‘For my birthday?’

  ‘Hmm, we’ve got our hands full already … But I suppose he could be a good addition to the act,’ Albert’s dad had said, ‘and he does seem like a friendly little chap.’

  Albert had picked the puppy up and laughed as it reached up and licked his face.

  ‘I’ll call him Harvey,’ he’d said, and Harvey had wagged his little puppy tail.

  The two of them had grown up together and hadn’t been apart since that day. He wished he could take the dog with him. He was sure Harvey would have made a good rat-catching dog – ratters were wanted out on the Western Front. Soldiers were even being paid to take them with them because they needed all the help they could get to keep down the rat infestation. But Albert was going to fight in the Middle East, and ratter dogs weren’t wanted over there.

  Albert sighed as he stood up to take off his costume and put on his new, uncomfortable army uniform instead. He patted Shanti’s side as Tara cheekily put her trunk to his pocket to see if there was another apple there. Shanti and Tara were always peckish after a show and Albert made sure he had their food all ready for them.

  Today it was mostly cabbages, but the elephants didn’t seem to mind too much and ate them all up.

  ‘You’ll have lots of tasty farm food once you get to your new home,’ Albert told them.

  Harvey didn’t eat cabbage even when he was very hungry and Albert had spent the last of his money on buying him a bone.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said as Harvey gently took it from him, tail wagging.

  Albert smiled as he watched Harvey lying on the ground and gnawing on the bone enthusiastically. Money well spent.

  Cabbages all eaten, Albert was confronted by Tara’s inquisitive trunk. She often checked his nose with her trunk as if she couldn’t work out where his was.

  ‘Hey,’ he said as she tugged at his face.

  Fortunately Shanti never tried to do the same. A baby elephant pulling your nose was bad enough, but he dreaded to think what a full-grown elephant could do.

  Tara made her laughing squee noise.

  ‘Tara the terrible, that’s what you should be called!’ Albert told her affectionately. ‘Tara the terrible!’

  Tara nuzzled her face into his, not caring one little bit.

  Albert swallowed hard. He was going to miss the baby elephant so much. His last day with Harvey, Shanti and Tara had sped past much too quickly.

  But what was done was done, and he had to do his duty. His country needed him.

  ‘What about the elephants?’ Albert had said, when the ringmaster had urged him to enlist as they passed through Lancaster at the end of August. ‘I can’t just leave them.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about them, they can help on the home front,’ the ringmaster had said.

  ‘They can?’ Albert asked, as the ringmaster pushed him inside the recruiting office. Tara was far too young to do any heavy work. She was still only a baby, a toddler really. ‘What are they going to do?’

  ‘I’ve found them a new home on a farm. Shanti will be doing a bit of forest log transporting and other farm work,’ the ringmaster told him. ‘Tara will be mostly watching her mum. They’ll get plenty of fresh air and good food to eat. Probably have a better life than in the circus.’

  Albert liked the idea of the elephants being outside more rather than stuck in the circus tent. But he was still worried about them.

  ‘Where are they being sent to?’

  ‘Lake District.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Stony Oakhill.’

  Albert had never even heard of the place.

  ‘Why didn’t you mention it before?’

  The ringmaster looked a bit sheepish.

  ‘I was going to tell you when we got back to the site. Only just heard about it myself. All got to do our part for the war effort haven’t we? If the army can requisition horses they can requisition elephants too – and camels.’

  The ringmaster put his arm round Albert’s shoulders as they stopped in front of the recruiting desk.

  ‘You want the best for your elephants, don’t you? You know this will be best for them.’

  ‘We’re looking for men who know about camels for the Camel Corps,’ the recruiter said.

  ‘Well, this is your man,’ the ringmaster told him, pushing Albert forward. ‘Been in the circus his whole life and not much he doesn’t know about the beast.’

  Albert thought this was a bit of an exaggeration. He’d only been on a camel a few times.

  ‘How old are you, lad?’ the recruiter asked Albert.

  ‘Fif–’ Albert started to say.

  ‘Nineteen,’ the ringmaster interrupted. ‘I can vouch for that.’

  ‘Where is the camel battalion based?’ Albert asked the recruiter.

  ‘Egypt,’ he was told. ‘Sign here.’ The recruiter held out a pen to him.

  And Albert almost took it.

  ‘But what about Harvey?’ he said to the ringmaster. ‘What’ll happen to him?’

  ‘He’ll be coming with me,’ the ringmaster said. ‘You know I’ve always had a soft spot for the dog.’ He took the pen from the recruiter and gave it to Albert and Albert signed the form.

  ‘Your dad would be proud of you,’ the ringmaster told him.

  Now, three weeks later, it was time to leave.

  ‘Ready?’ the ringmaster asked, pulling back the tent flap and startling Albert. ‘Don’t want to miss that train.’

  Albert swallowed hard, fighting back the urge to cry out that he didn’t want to go. It had all been a terrible mistake. He should never have let the ringmaster persuade him to enlist. He shouldn’t have listened when he’d told him that it was the right thing to do and his father would have been proud of him. ‘You’re sure the animals –’

  ‘They will be fine,’ the ringmaster said. ‘The elephants will be helping out on the home front and Harvey will be with me.’ He went to stroke Harvey, but the dog picked up his now meatless bone and headed over to Shanti to carry on eating it underneath her. The ringmaster sniffed. ‘Not like there’s going to be a circus any more for them to be part of anyway. We’ll all have gone our separate ways before the week’s out.’

  Albert nodded but couldn’t trust himself to speak.

  ‘I’ll give you a minute to say your goodbyes,’ the ringmaster told him. ‘But don’t take too long.’

  Harvey came out from underneath Shanti as soon as the ringmaster had gone and Albert hugged him to him.

  ‘You be a good dog now, you hear?’ he said.

  Harvey sat still and tilted his head to one side and then slowly put out a front paw to him which Albert translated as more strokes please. Once he’d p
atted him some more Albert took the note he’d written to the elephants’ new owner over to Shanti.

  ‘Head, Shanti,’ he said, and when the elephant lowered her head he put the note inside the pocket behind the star on her headdress. Albert thought it might help if their new owner continued to use the commands the elephants were already used to, so he’d written them all down.

  ‘Goodbye, sweet Shanti,’ Albert said, as Tara plonked her trunk on top of his head and ruffled his hair again. ‘Goodbye, little Tara the terrible,’ Albert laughed as he turned and hugged the baby elephant. ‘Goodbye, Harvey,’ he said, as the dog whined and put out his paw again.

  ‘Time to go!’ the ringmaster shouted. ‘It’s almost five o’clock.’

  ‘Coming,’ said Albert, picking up his brown cardboard suitcase.

  Harvey got up to go with him.

  ‘No, Harvey, you wait here,’ Albert said.

  Harvey whined again. He didn’t want to wait.

  ‘Sit,’ said Albert.

  Harvey sat.

  ‘Now stay,’ Albert said, and he swallowed hard and left the tent to join the ringmaster.

  ‘No time to lose,’ the ringmaster said, as they headed briskly for Whitehaven railway station.

  ‘I thought I saw Carl from Cullen’s Circus in the audience this afternoon,’ Albert told the ringmaster, as they walked.

  ‘Did you?’ the ringmaster frowned. ‘Doesn’t seem very likely. Are you absolutely sure?’

  And now Albert wasn’t quite so sure. ‘I … I think so.’

  Carl’s cruel treatment of Shanti was the reason Albert’s dad had made them leave the much larger and more successful Cullen’s Circus for the smaller Lewis Brothers’ one. His dad said he wished they could take all of the elephants away from there. But they weren’t rich enough to do so and had used just about all their savings buying Shanti. Of course they hadn’t known she was newly pregnant when they’d bought her and an elephant’s pregnancy lasts almost two years so Tara hadn’t come along for a long time and was quite a surprise when she did.

  But the ringmaster had been delighted. ‘Two elephants for the price of one! You should be celebrating,’ he said to Albert’s father.