IF SHE HAD FLOWN LAST NIGHT . .

When Ian D. Shaw went with his wife to watch the elephants `LOOK,' said my wife Gudula, waving our local newspaper, La Tribune de Geneve, at me. 'Look, the elephants are going to parade this morning.' Each year, Switzerland's National Circus arrives in Geneva to mark the end of summer and each year the elephants go for a walk through the city centre, stopping to absorb their breakfasts and morning coffees on their way.

Gudula loves elephants, and we haven't been to the Cirque Knie since our son Olivier was tiny enough to be impressed by how much digestive waste elephants can evacuate at once, and daughter Stephanie was so little that she stayed at home with the baby-sitter.

Olivier is now 27 and living in Beijing. Stephanie will be 24 next month and is off on holiday in New York.

Gudula and I went downtown to see her elephants. It was a bril- liantly sunny morning, with a premature autumnal chill in the air. We decided to join the crowd expected at the 'breakfast point'. The throng was thick when we arrived, but awfully good-natured. There were a few clowns doing their best to keep the children patient, and most adults had been good enough to let the kids get to the front or hoist them on their shoulders. One remarkably pretty little girl reviewed the scene from above her mother's head, her tiny replica profile framed by a shining short bob of silver-blonde hair.

'Ils arrivent!' she cried.

Gudula was at least as excited as the girl, even though she hadn't asked me to hoist her on my shoulder. . . .

Into the improvised enclosure beside the tiny fountained square they came, trunk to tail, tail to trunk, great grey reminders of our pre-history with little brown eyes winking wisely in the sunshine. Ranged now side by side, they tucked into their breakfast of let- tuces and loaves of bread. Carrots too. The children in the crowd squealed with delight. What tiny breadcrumbs the elephants can sweep up on a curl of their trunk! How gently they fold their great ears back and forward, moving from one foot to another!

Gudula is right to love elephants.

We took coffee at a nearby café where, from our pavement position, we could have one more glimpse of them as they set off to climb up into what is left of Geneva's mediaeval old town.

Trunk to tail, tail to trunk. How fast they move in that strange slow-motion gait of theirs. . . .

`I'm so glad we came,' said Gudula.

`Me too,' I said. 'If Stephanie had flown back last night as planned I'd have been on papa-taxi duty to meet her this morn- ing, and would have missed the fun. Now I don't need to be at the airport until tomorrow morning.'

That same evening, in New York, Stephanie must have been tri- umphant to clear the waiting list and board the Swissair flight to Geneva.

Flight SR111 was lost with all 229 passengers and crew just off the coast of Nova Scotia.

So she is gone. Until forever ends.

But next year the elephants will come back and the children will squeal and maybe we shall have learned to breathe normally once more.