There was not that much to running a tea estate, really. The sun shone, the rain fell, the tea bushes did their trick. You had to keep an eye on the accounts, make sure the schoolteacher didn’t brainwash everybody with talk of the Mahatma, look out that the chaps and the ladies were paid, fair and square, especially the tea-pickers for their back-breaking work, keep the cricket pitch flat – he’d managed to purloin a cast-iron roller, his pride and joy – and that was pretty much it. No, there was not much drama to running a tea estate, even one on the very far eastern edge of India. At least, that’s what Mr McGregor thought until one afternoon in May 1942 at half-past four, just before the monsoon broke. He was enjoying a cuppa on his verandah when the biggest elephant he had ever seen came clumping up his drive, eating his hydrangeas on the run, on its back a pannier full of half-caste kids and a bloody white woman to boot.
Behind the monster came a whole long line of more elephants, dozens of them, snacking on his tea, trampling over his prized garden.
The monster stopped, half-buckled and the woman and the children tumbled out. She was blonde, needed a good wash from the look of her, and started yelling at him.
‘I’m sorry to intrude, sir’ – she spoke rather nicely, considering her attitude towards hygiene – ‘but may I ask, have you a telephone?’
‘Yes, of course,’ shouted Mr McGregor. ‘Would you care for some tea?’ Of that, they had an elegant sufficiency.
The line was ghastly, a stew of hisses and crackles, but finally, she heard a clipped voice: ‘Dugdale.’
No time for introductions, the line could die at any moment.
‘My word. What’s your evidence?’
‘Twelve letters to Jiff sympathisers from his address in Berlin, personally signed by Bose himself. To be hand-carried to the recipients by messenger, to launch an uprising against the British in September.’
‘And have you got the letters?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘Grace Collins, schoolteacher, formerly of Rangoon, only daughter of Alfred Collins, of HM Treasury. Sir, we have a British officer with us, he wrote a report on the Jiffs. He’s dying, he was shot by the Japanese, he needs penicillin.’
‘How did you get hold of these letters?’
‘They were given to me,’ Grace could scarcely bring herself to finish the sentence, ‘by Bose’s personal messenger, the courier. A Jiff who turned against the Japs.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Dead. Murdered. He wanted me to tell you.’
The line creaked and howled.
‘What?’
‘He wanted me to tell you that he wanted an independent India. With Bose in Berlin, we must promise independence.’
‘That’s for upstairs, Miss Collins.’
‘Then you must tell upstairs. You must promise.’
‘I promise I will. Where the hell are you?’
She told him the name of the tea estate.
‘How did you get there from Burma?’
A weird knocking on the line, a fizz, then his voice, more clearly than before: ‘What did you say?’
‘E-L-E-P-H-A-N-T.’
‘Is that bugger Sam Metcalf anything to do with this?’
‘Yes, he’s brought fifty-three elephants into India. He can’t talk on the phone because he’s still a little deaf. He blew up half a mountain to stop the Japanese from following us.’
‘Typical. Officially, he’s been dead for two months. Tell Sam we’ve got a new boss, name of Slim. He’s good. And tell him we’ve stopped losing to the Japs. What’s the name of the injured officer, the one who wrote the report on the Jiffs?’
‘Peach. Lieutenant Peach. Bertie Peach.’
‘Ah, yes, Colonel Handscombe’s told me all about him.’
‘Good?’
‘No, all bad.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Don’t worry. Handscombe’s a moron. Can’t wait to meet Peach. I’ll get the penicillin. Need those letters from Bose. Where’s the nearest airstrip?’
She asked McGregor, who told her the name of a town.
‘How far is that?’
‘One hundred miles away.’
She told Dugdale.
‘That’s too far. Make one.’
‘What?’ It was her turn to be incredulous.
‘Ask the elephants nicely to roll around on their bottoms and you’ll have an airstrip in no time. Three hundred yards long. No bumps. Got that? We’ll land at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ll bring a quack with me, and a bucket of penicillin.’
‘What if—’
‘Winston wants to know where Bose is, has been driving everyone mad about it, always “Where’s Bose?” No bumps. See you in the morning. Bye.’
They worked through the night, the estate lit by hurricane lights, Henry VIII, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and the others expanding the cricket pitch, uprooting the tea bushes, the animals taking turns to flatten the ground with the roller. Oomy tried to help but really he just got in the way. By sunrise, the tea estate boasted the smoothest landing strip in the whole of Bengal.
Sam looked in on the patient lying in the McGregors’ guest bedroom, with a view east, looking at the high country from which they had come. Grace was nursing him, dabbing his feverish skin with cold water, but the infection was gaining on him. The elephant man unpeeled the make-shift bandage, revealing the sorry mess of his right leg. The foot was beginning to go a pale green.
He shook his head. ‘The leg has to be amputated, I’m afraid.’
‘Can you do it?’
‘I’d rather not. I do elephants, not humans.’
‘Can it wait?’
‘No. If the foot is going gangrenous, the blood poisoning could kill him in hours.’
‘So?’
Sam sighed, closed his eyes. ‘I’ll do it.’
He took off Peach’s right leg, below the knee. After he had finished making a tourniquet for the amputated stump, Grace glanced at Sam. He shrugged: ‘That’s the best I can do. He might pull through. We need that penicillin.’
She soothed Peach’s brow with a damp rag, and kissed him on the lips and said: ‘Stay with us, you damned fool.’
A murmur outside, and she raised her head to look out of the window to see the entire school watching, silent in sympathy.
At nine o’clock sharp, they heard the drone of an aeroplane engine, rising and falling. The pilot turned to his first officer, saying ‘Looks like a bloody zoo down there’ and tilted the wing, losing height with every second.
THE END