Catching the Sun

Read on for one of Tony’s short stories from Departures (#litres_trial_promo)

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PART ONE

1

On the first day we watched the elephants come from the sea.

‘Look!’ Keeva cried. ‘Look at the sea!’

I sat up but I could see nothing. Just my daughter – Keeva, nine years old, stick thin, pointing out at a sea so calm it looked like a lake made of glass.

Tess, my wife, stirred beside me and sat up. She had been sleeping, worn out by a night in the air and coming seven thousand miles. We both watched Keeva, down where the sand met the water, excitedly waving her arms in the air.

I could actually see the heat. We were on the beach at Nai Yang, just after breakfast, and the air was already starting to shimmer and bend. I thought – If it’s this hot so early in the day, what will it be like later?

Keeva was jumping up and down by now.

‘Oh!’ she cried. ‘You must see it! Oh, oh, oh!’

Our boy, Rory, was between me and Tess, on his stomach, a wet and battered copy of My Family and Other Animals on his lap. He looked up at his twin sister, adjusting his glasses, impatiently shaking his head. Then his jaw dropped open.

‘Oh,’ he gasped.

Tess laughed, and stood up, brushing the sand from her legs, and all the exhaustion of the journey seemed to vanish with her smile.

‘Can’t you see them?’ she asked me, taking Rory by the hand as they began walking down to the sea.

Then it was suddenly there for me too, this thing poking out of the water, a gnarled tube moving towards the shore. It looked like some prehistoric snorkel. Then there was another one. Then two more. All these prehistoric snorkels, steadily moving towards Hat Nai Yang. And always getting bigger.

Everyone on the beach was looking out to sea now, and there was a collective gasp as the head of the first elephant broke the surface, its huge eyes blinking, the mighty head nodding, the beads of water flying from the ears. And then another. Then an entire family of elephants was marching out of the water, their mighty grey bulks rising out of the sea like gods from the deep. I saw the men on their backs, the mahouts, lean and brown and grinning, steering with their bare feet pressed behind the ears of the great beasts.

But really all we saw were the elephants coming out of the empty sea.

‘Wow,’ said Tess. ‘How did they do that, Tom?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’

I looked down the great sandy sweep of Hat Nai Yang. The beach was a perfect bow shape, and I guessed that somewhere beyond the curve in the bay there was a secluded spot where the mahouts slipped into the water to surprise the people further down the beach. But watching the elephants come out of the sea still seemed like more than a clever trick.

It felt like magic.

Keeva backed away from the elephants. They were out of the sea now, their giant feet contracting as they trod on the soft sand of Hat Nai Yang. She came running back to us.

‘Elephants can swim?’ Keeva said. ‘Elephants can swim, Daddy?’

‘Elephants are good swimmers,’ Rory said, blinking behind his glasses. ‘Like all mammals. Apart from apes and humans. They have to be taught to swim. The apes and the human do.’

His sister snorted with derision. ‘I swim good.’

Rory’s eyes never left the elephants. ‘But you had to be taught, didn’t you? And the elephants just know.’

Rory took my hand and we stood watching as Tess and Keeva walked down to the crowd that had gathered around the elephants.

There were four of the big beautiful brutes, being patted and petted and cooed over by the people on the beach. The bird-like chatter of Thai filled the air. It was a Sunday and Hat Nai Yang was popular with locals at the weekend. We were the only foreigners on the beach.

‘Looks like a family,’ Rory said.

‘Four of them,’ I said, smiling down at him. ‘Same as us.’

But his face was serious. He peered at the elephants and the blaze of the early morning sun turned his glasses into discs of gold.

‘They’re very floaty,’ he said thoughtfully. He looked up at me. ‘What do you call it? When something is very floaty?’

I thought about it. But he was faster than me.

‘Buoyant,’ Rory said. ‘Elephants are very buoyant mammals.’

We watched the crowd with the elephants. A young Thai woman in an old-fashioned swimsuit was lying on her belly and one of the elephants was softly patting her on the back and legs with one of its mammoth feet. The monster paw lingered over her buttocks, and seemed to think about it. The crowd roared with laughter.

‘She Yum-Yum,’ one of the elephant handlers shouted to me. This mahout, the one who had some English, was by far the oldest. They looked like a father and his three sons, and they all had lean, stringy bodies. Ropey muscles, bulging veins. Their skin was almost black from the sun. ‘Yum-Yum give massage,’ the old man called.

It did look like a massage. We watched the largest elephant carefully wrap its trunk around Keeva and lift her clean off the sand. She shouted with delight.

‘You want to do that?’ I asked Rory.

He shook his head. ‘They’re not meant to be clowns,’ he said. ‘Elephants are working animals.’

‘Oh, come on, Rory,’ I said.

‘They’re not here to entertain us,’ he said. ‘For some sort of show. Some sort of circus. They carried teak. Maybe these ones. Maybe these were the ones who carried the teak. Up in the mountains. Elephants are good in mountains.’

‘But this is work too,’ I said. ‘Maybe they prefer to do this than carry piles of wood around all day.’

He was not convinced.

‘Elephants are strong,’ he said. ‘Elephants are smart.’ He looked up at me through his glasses. ‘Now they have to muck about with Keeva, who didn’t even know that elephants can swim.’

I felt a flicker of irritation. Silently we watched the elephants moving into the sea. There were children on their backs. Keeva was on the largest elephant, gripping its ears and laughing as it splashed into the water.