The Elephant's Tale (2 page)

Jemmy gave her an affectionate shove with his nose. Martine was tempted to go for a quick ride on him, but she resisted because Ben would soon be back from Cape Town and she wanted to hear about his morning. She also wanted to help him get settled into the guest room, where he’d be staying during the Christmas break while his Indian mum and African dad were away on their cruise. They’d wanted him to go with them, but Ben was studying under Tendai to be an apprentice tracker and had asked if he could stay behind to brush up on his bushcraft skills.

He and Martine were determined to have a peaceful, fun vacation at Sawubona after spending their last one trying to save a leopard from some evil hunters and a desperate gang of treasure seekers in the wilds of Zimbabwe.

Martine was locking the game park gate when the long black car suddenly
vroomed
into life. It reversed down the driveway at speed, almost knocking over a flowerpot. To Martine’s surprise, her grandmother, who considered politeness to be the number one virtue and insisted in accompanying visitors out to their cars and waving until they’d gone, was nowhere to be seen. An uneasy feeling stirred in her.

She was hurrying through the mango trees toward the house when Tendai’s jeep came flying into the yard. Ben was in the passenger seat. He grinned when he saw Martine, his teeth very white against the burnt-honey color of his face.

“I hitched a ride from the main road with Tendai,” he explained when the jeep bounced to a halt. He hoisted his backpack over one shoulder and jumped down from the battered vehicle. He was wearing a khaki vest, baggy camouflage trousers, and hiking boots. “The people who gave me a lift seemed reluctant to come all the way to the house in case they were eaten by a lion.”

Normally Martine would have cracked a joke, but she was still taking in that the house was oddly silent. At eight o’clock Gwyn Thomas was usually drinking tea and eating gooseberry jam toast at the kitchen table while listening to the news and weather on the radio. She’d also been planning to bake some scones to welcome Ben.

“Where is your grandmother, little one?” the game warden asked. “I’ve been calling her on both the landline and her cell phone to check with her about a delivery. There’s no answer.”

Martine stared at him. “Tendai, something’s wrong. This creepy man came to see her and now something’s wrong, I just know it is.”

“What
creepy man?” asked Ben, dropping his backpack on the lawn.

Tendai frowned. “Are you talking of the man in the black car? He almost ran us off the road.”

He started toward the house, with Martine and Ben following. Martine was kicking herself for not insisting that she go with the man to the house. If anything had happened to her grandmother . . .

Warrior, Gwyn Thomas’s black and white cat, was sitting on the front step in the sunshine, his tail swishing furiously. His fur was standing on end. Tendai stepped around him and into the living room. “Mrs. Thomas?” he called. “Mrs. Thomas, are you all right?”

“Grandmother!” yelled Martine.

“No need to shout.” Gwyn Thomas’s subdued voice echoed faintly along the passage. “I’m in my study.”

Martine flew along the corridor and knocked at the study door out of habit. Her grandmother was sitting hunched at her desk, her face the same color as the sheaf of papers she was holding. When she looked up, Martine was shocked to see that her blue eyes were rimmed with red, as if she’d been crying.

“Come in, Martine, Tendai,” she said. “You too, Ben. You’re part of the family.”

“That weird, creepy man has done something to upset you, hasn’t he? I knew he was bad news as soon as I saw him.”

“Martine, how many times have I got to tell you not to judge people on the basis of your gut feelings?” Gwyn Thomas scolded. Her hands tightened on the documents. “However, in this case I fear you may be right.”

She paused and gazed lingeringly out of the window, as if trying to imprint the view of springbok and zebra grazing around the water hole on her mind. “I wish I didn’t have to say what I’m about to say to you all.”

“Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be okay, Mrs. Thomas,” Tendai reassured her.

Martine wasn’t in the least bit sure things were going to be okay. “Grandmother, you’re frightening us. What happened? Who
was
he?”

“His name is Reuben James,” Gwyn Thomas answered at last, turning to face them. “He was a business associate of my late husband. I have a vague recollection of meeting him once and finding him a bit too flashy for my liking, although from what I remember the deal he and Henry did together went quite smoothly. Mr. James spends most of his time in Namibia and overseas and claims to have discovered only recently that Henry was killed by poachers two and a half years ago. He has just arrived with this.”

She held up one of the documents. Across the middle of it was written:
Last Will and Testament of Henry Paul Thomas.
In the top right-hand corner was a wax stamp, wobbly at the corners, like a splash of blood. Peering closer, Martine made out the logo of Cutter and Bow Solicitors, Hampshire, England.

Tendai was confused. “But what is he doing with such a private document?”

“Good question. And the first one I asked him. It turns out that, three years ago, when Sawubona was in financial difficulty, Henry borrowed a large amount of money from Mr. James. He apparently agreed to change his will to say that if the money was not paid back by December twelfth of this year—today, in other words—the game reserve and everything on it would automatically belong to Reuben James.”

“My God,” said Tendai. He sank into the spare chair.

Martine stood frozen, the words searing a path from her brain to her heart.
The game reserve and everything on it . . . The game reserve and everything on it.

Ben said, “Does that mean that the original will, making you the owner of Sawubona if Mr. Thomas passed away, is now worthless?”

Gwyn Thomas nodded. “Yes, because that will was written a decade or more before the one produced by Mr. James. But that’s not the worst part . . .”

Martine gasped. “There’s worse?”

“I’m afraid so. We’ve been served with an eviction order. We have thirteen days to leave Sawubona, give notice to all the staff, and say good-bye to all the animals. In thirteen days Sawubona will no longer be ours.”

W
henever Martine thought about the fire that killed her parents—which wasn’t very often because it was a no-go place in her head—one moment stood out for her. It wasn’t the moment when she’d woken in a fogged-up terror on the night of her eleventh birthday to realize her home was ablaze and her mum and dad were on the other side of a burning door. It wasn’t even when her room had turned into a furnace and her pajamas began melting off her back, and she’d had to improvise a rope from her bedsheets and shimmy down two stories before crashing into the snow far below.

No, it was after all of that. After she’d come rushing around the side of the house to find a crowd gathered on the front lawn. There’d been horrified gasps as people who thought she’d perished in the flames turned to see her running toward the smoldering wreckage, screaming for her parents. One of the neighbors, Mr. Morrison, had managed to catch her, and his wife had held her while she struggled and sobbed.

Martine could still remember when it hit her that her mum and dad, with whom she’d shared a laughter-filled birthday dinner of chocolate and almond pancakes just a few hours earlier, were gone forever.

That’s the moment when her life had officially ended. That’s when everything she’d ever loved was lost.

Now it was happening again.

The bulldozers were at Sawubona by nine a.m. the next morning. They came up the road like a line of yellow caterpillars, ready to chomp everything in their path. They parked right outside the animal sanctuary and their clunking, roaring engines terrified the sick and orphaned creatures a thousand times more than Reuben James’s car had done.

Gwyn Thomas went out to stop them with an expression so ferocious that Martine was amazed their operators didn’t turn tail and flee. She stood in front of the first bulldozer with her hands on her hips, like a protestor facing down an army tank.

“And what exactly do you think you’re doing, coming onto my property and frightening already traumatized animals?” she demanded.

The lead operator clambered off his machine, smirking. “Just following orders, ma’am.”

“You’ll be following orders right into jail if you don’t leave immediately. If you’re not off my land in three minutes, I’m calling the police.”

“Go right ahead.” The man took a piece of paper from his pocket and unrolled it. “This is a court order giving us permission to start work on this site. We understand that you won’t be vacating the reserve for another two weeks, but in the meantime we need to start laying the groundwork for the safari park.”

“I don’t care whether you’re laying the groundwork for Windsor Castle,” Gwyn Thomas ranted. “You’re not moving one grain of sand—” She stopped. “I’m sorry. I think I misheard you. You’re doing
what?”

The man handed her the document. Gwyn Thomas put on her glasses. Martine, watching from a safe distance, saw her shoulders stiffen.

Her grandmother’s voice became dangerously quiet. “The White Giraffe Safari Park? That’s what you’re intending to build here?”

The man’s grin began to fade. “I guess so. That’s what it says.”

“Well,” said Gwyn Thomas, “let me save you a great deal of trouble. There will be no White Giraffe Safari Park here. There will be no Pink Elephant, Black Rhino, or any other themed safari park you care to mention. Over my dead body will Mr. James inherit Sawubona.”

“Now hold on a minute,” objected the bulldozer operator. “There’s no need for that kind of talk. I’m only doing my job.”

Gwyn Thomas handed him his document with exaggerated politeness. “Of course you are. How unreasonable of me. You’re only following orders. In that case you won’t mind if my game warden follows orders to leave this gate open so that the lions can take their morning stroll around your bulldozers while I drive into Storm Crossing to see my lawyer? Hopefully they’ve already eaten their breakfast. They do love a bit of fresh meat in the morning . . .”

But Martine was no longer listening. The sick, sad feeling that had enveloped her ever since she’d learned of Sawubona’s fate had been replaced by one of pure rage. The showpiece of Mr. James’s grand plan to turn the game reserve into a glorified zoo was to be Jemmy. Not only was her soul mate to be taken from her, he was going to become the star of the Reuben James Show.

Trailing after Gwyn Thomas as she stalked back to the house, Martine silently echoed her grandmother’s words: “Over my dead body, Mr. James.”

T
hree hours later, Gwyn Thomas was back from Storm Crossing with good news and bad news.

“Tell us the nice news first,” said Martine as she and Ben followed her grandmother into the study. She gestured to her friend to take the spare chair while she perched on top of a filing cabinet.

Gwyn Thomas held up a legal letter. “For what it’s worth, that would be this—an injunction to prevent Mr. James and his crew of heavies from laying a single brick until the day we officially leave Sawubona: Christmas Eve. The bad news is that we can’t stop them from coming to the game reserve as often as they want to in the meantime. They’re entitled to bring along as many architects, designers, and wildlife experts as they feel necessary in order to plan for their takeover of the reserve.”

“That’s outrageous,” said Martine, who didn’t tend to use such dramatic words, but felt it was called for now. “We can’t possibly have that hateful man planning his stupid zoo and bringing people to poke and prod our animals while we’re still living here. If he lays a finger on Jemmy, I might be tempted to do something violent. At the very least I’ll have to deflate his tires.”

“Martine!” Gwyn Thomas was horrified. “I will not have you talking like a young thug; I don’t care how upset you are. I know you’re devastated at the prospect of losing Jemmy, but really that’s no excuse.”

She stood up and walked over to the window. “How do you think
I
feel? Sawubona has been my home for more than half my life, and it was your mum’s home before it was yours. It was your grandfather’s dream before I met him and then it became our shared vision. And now I have to face the fact that the man I loved may have deceived me by signing away that dream to Mr. James.”

She turned around. “But, you know, I’m not willing to believe that. Your grandfather wasn’t perfect, but he was an honorable man. If he did sign away Sawubona, he’d have done it with the best of intentions—perhaps to protect me from knowing how bad our financial situation was. Either that, or he was tricked into changing his will.

“Unfortunately, none of that matters now. However noble his intentions, his actions are probably going to cost me my home and my life. And that hurts. It really hurts. Barring a miracle, Martine, in two weeks’ time you and I and the cats are going to have to pack up everything we own and move into a rented apartment.”