by Anna Wilson
‘Yes,’ said Mum quietly. ‘Very fetching.’
‘Aren’t those your pants too, Uncle Zed?’ said Felix. ‘On the little one’s head?’ His voice went squeaky at the end as he said this last bit.
‘Hmmm,’ said Zed. His voice was going squeaky too. ‘I recognize those shorts too,’ he added, letting slip a sort of snorty noise. ‘Reckon they look better on a monkey than on you, dude.’
Felix could not hold himself together any longer. His pursed lips burst open, making a raspberry farting sound and suddenly he was laughing and laughing and laughing, so hard he thought that he might actually have stopped breathing. Zed and Mum joined in, clutching at their sides and pointing at the film, gasping, ‘Oh my goodness, that is too funny!’
Bibi was smiling and shaking his head, saying, ‘Well, I never saw such a thing.’
The only person who was not joining in was Mo.
‘I am glad you are all so HAPPY!’ she shouted.
Everyone immediately stopped giggling and looked at her. She had her hands on her hips and her face was thunderous.
‘W-what’s the matter, Mo?’ Felix stammered.
‘What is the MATTER?’ Mo cried. ‘I will tell you what the matter is, Feeeliiix. You blamed me for the missing camera and the film of you on the toilet and your uncle in the shower and your mother getting undressed. And now you see that it was not me at all, it was these monkeys, and you think it is FUNNY?’
‘Harmony,’ Bibi said, reaching out to touch her shoulder. ‘Can you not see that it is amusing?’
Mo pulled away. ‘NO!’
‘At least everyone now knows it was not your fault,’ said Bibi.
‘I’m sorry, Mo,’ said Felix. ‘I should have trusted you.’
‘Yes,’ said Mum. ‘We are sorry.’
Mo crossed her arms tightly across her chest and frowned even harder. ‘What about you, Mr Zed?’ she said, ‘Hmm?’
Zed looked sheepish too. ‘Like, sorry, Mo.’
Then Mo shot Felix a strange look: a sort of sparkly-eyed mischievous look. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I will forgive all of you.’
The atmosphere lifted as Mo smiled at Felix. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘Good, that is settled,’ said Bibi. ‘Let’s eat!’
Everyone began making their way over to the table, chattering and laughing about the monkeys. Felix walked with Mo. He smiled at her, feeling relieved that he had been forgiven. He was about to suggest that she borrow his camera as a kind of peace offering.
But then he saw that Mo was no longer smiling at him. Instead she had fixed him with a steely glare.
Felix felt his stomach lurch.
Mo leaned in so that the adults would not hear. Then she hissed into Felix’s ear. ‘I am not finished with you, Mr Feeeliiix. You had better watch out.’
The next day, Mo waited until the adults were resting in the heat again. Then she grabbed Felix by the arm and whispered, ‘Come with me.’
Felix reluctantly followed as Mo slipped away from the grown-ups and sat in the shade of a tree.
Mo put her head on one side and regarded Felix thoughtfully. She was quiet for a bit too long and Felix began to feel uncomfortable.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he whispered.
Mo held up a finger for him to be quiet. She checked that no one was nearby, then she beckoned to Felix to lean in closer so that she could say in a low voice, ‘I have a plan to get you a monkey.’
Felix swallowed. ‘You do? I thought you were still cross with me from yesterday. And anyway, I’m not sure it’s such a good idea. Now that I’ve seen what they did—’
‘What is the matter with you?’ Mo hissed. ‘Are you a chicken or a boy?’
‘I – I’m a boy,’ said Felix, not liking the tone Mo’s voice had taken.
‘Good. Then you will do as I say. Otherwise your English Girl Friend will call you a chicken too, I think, hmm?’
Felix sighed. He recognized these tactics. Mo was On A Roll.
‘I have been thinking about this Girl Friend of yours,’ Mo went on. ‘She must be pretty special if you are so worried about getting her the right present,’ she said.
Felix blushed. ‘It’s not that,’ he mumbled.
‘Oh, so is it that you are frightened of this girl, then?’ Mo said, a triumphant note creeping into her voice. ‘You are frightened of monkeys and you are frightened of girls! Ha!’
‘NO!’ Felix protested.
‘Shhh!’ Mo put her finger to her lips and nodded towards the grown-ups. ‘They will hear us.’
Felix was trapped.
‘This is what I understand,’ Mo went on. ‘Your English Girl Friend has made a bet with you to get her a monkey and you are worried that she will do something to you if you do not succeed?’
Felix shook his head furiously. ‘I just wanted to get her what she asked for because I feel bad about her not being here. She loves animals and she has always wanted to come to Africa.’
Mo’s face seemed to have softened when Felix mentioned the words ‘animals’ and ‘Africa’.
‘Oh, that is very sad,’ she said. ‘So why could she not come to my country with you? Is she sick?’
Felix almost said, ‘Yes,’ just to shut her up, but then he was not very good at lying, and he thought if Mo was beginning to feel sorry for Flo, then perhaps she would understand if he just told her the truth.
So he explained about how he and Flo had been making the Natural History Documentary together and how Flo had wanted so much to come to Africa to make a proper film. Then he told Mo about the time Flo had decided to try and steal the monkeys at Shortfleet Safari Park and how it had not worked.
Mo listened carefully. Then she said, ‘But tell me, why does your friend want so much to have a monkey as a pet?’
‘Well, why do you want to have a mongoose as a pet?’ he said.
‘That is obvious,’ said Mo. ‘Kabelo is furry and cuddly and funny.’
‘Well, that’s what Flo would say about monkeys,’ Felix pointed out.
‘Hmm,’ said Mo.
Felix did not like the look on Mo’s face. ‘I really, really do NOT want to try and steal a monkey from here any more, you know,’ he said hastily. ‘I have changed my mind now that I have seen how clever they can be. And actually, the monkeys in the park pulled Flo’s hair, so if I reminded her of that, she would understand that having a monkey as a pet is not such a good idea . . .’
Mo smiled sweetly. ‘That is because they were captured monkeys, Felix,’ she said. ‘They were cross because they were being locked into the park, like you told me. The monkeys here are not like that.’
Felix had a strong suspicion that Mo was not telling the truth.
‘But look at what they did with the camera and our clothes and stuff,’ said Felix.
‘They were being funny and playful!’ Mo insisted. ‘Anyway, you want only one little baby monkey for your Girl Friend, do you not?’
‘I don’t understand,’ Felix said. ‘Why would you want to help me after I nearly got you into so much trouble?’
Mo’s eyes flashed. ‘I like you, Felix,’ she said slyly. Then after a pause, she added. ‘Also I need to teach those monkeys a lesson for getting me into trouble.’
Mo outlined her plan.
‘We are going to set up a little picnic for the monkeys,’ she said. ‘Nothing tempts a monkey like a table full of food.’
‘Won’t your dad be cross?’ Felix asked.
Mo grinned and raised one eyebrow. ‘Only if he finds out.’
Felix was really not sure he wanted to be involved in Mo’s plan.
Do all girls go on missions like this? he wondered. Flo was always going on missions. And look where they had got him . . .
Mo, meanwhile, was completely unaware of Felix’s discomfort. She was saying that they should take some food now while the adults were sleeping.
‘Come on!’ she hissed. ‘You must help me. We must do it now – quick!’
> Felix unwillingly did as he was told. He followed Mo to the kitchen area and took armfuls of bread rolls and bananas, tomatoes and apples.
‘This is the kind of food that the monkeys like,’ Mo whispered. ‘And we do not like all these fruits and vegetables so much, do we? So it will not matter if we take some.’
‘Actually, I do like bananas,’ Felix muttered.
Mo’s behaviour reminded him more and more of Flo. He suddenly remembered the time that Flo had announced that Hammer the hamster should go on holiday, ‘because it is unfair to keep him shut up in a cage all the time’. She had convinced Felix that it would be a Very Good Idea to post Hammer in a special box (‘that is why it’s called Special Delivery, because they treat the box extra-specially carefully’) to her cousin who lived by the seaside. Hammer had, thankfully, survived the journey, but Felix had almost not survived when his mum had gone so red in the face he had been convinced that she would explode right there and then, like a bomb or something, and she had made him drive with her all the way to the seaside, which had taken far too many hours, and then made him apologize to Flo’s aunt, even though it had not been his fault in the first place.
He had a nasty feeling that he would end up in a similar situation because of Mo’s plan, the way things were going.
‘OK,’ said Mo, as they spread out their haul on the grass. ‘I am going to get a cloth and some cutlery and lay the meal out as if I am preparing a proper feast,’ she said.
Felix tried to protest that this was a silly idea. Monkeys did not need cutlery.
‘But the monkeys will like playing with it, do you not see? It will mean they are so distracted they will not notice when I pounce on one of the babies,’ Mo said.
‘How will you actually get hold of a baby?’ asked Felix. He was feeling a bit sick at the thought of this now – what if a mother monkey got angry with Mo and tried to attack her?
Mo would not be moved, however. She arched one eyebrow. ‘I will tell you that in a minute,’ she said. ‘First, let’s put the cutlery out.’
Soon everything was gathered, ready for a feast: the middle of the cloth was piled high with plates of bananas, bowls of tomatoes and apples, and a large basket of bread rolls. Mo had also thoughtfully laid on some drinks for the monkeys in the form of cans of Coke and fizzy orange.
She stood back to survey their handiwork.
‘My, that is a picnic fit for a chief,’ she said, nodding in a satisfied way. Then she turned to Felix. ‘And now you must do as I say. You must climb the tree and take this with you.’ She pulled her mosquito net out of her pocket and handed it to him. ‘When you see the monkey you want, drop this on it and I will dash out from behind that bush and grab the monkey.’
Felix shuffled his feet in the dust. He desperately tried to think of a way to stop this plan from happening altogether. ‘I think I should put the cans of drink away,’ he said in a panicky tone. ‘That kind of thing is bad for animals.’
Mo rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, do not be such a fusspot!’ she exclaimed. ‘Anyway, if my daddy wakes up now and comes to see what we are doing, he will only think that we are having a little picnic, just the two of us.’
‘Hmmm. S’pose,’ said Felix. He eyed the mountains of food and drink and thought that there was no way Bibi would fall for that. ‘What if the monkeys don’t come, after all?’ he went on, secretly hoping very much that this would be the case.
Mo sucked her teeth. ‘Tcho! They will come. Now, take the net and climb!’
Then she went and sat behind a nearby bush and waited.
Felix stuffed the net into the pocket of his shorts, climbed the tree as far as the lowest branches, and waited. At least it was cool in the shade of the leaves, he thought miserably.
Suddenly there was a thud from another tree somewhere nearby, and a slipping noise, then a chatter and two small vervet monkeys came into view.
Mo peered up at Felix from her hiding place and grinned. ‘There!’ she rasped. ‘I told you they would come.’
The monkeys raced over to the picnic and began grabbing at the bread and bananas.
‘There wasn’t much point in laying the cutlery out,’ Felix muttered to himself.
One of the monkeys had picked up a can of Coke and had managed to hook a finger around the ring-pull and began tugging at it.
Maybe we didn’t leave the tent open after all? Felix thought. It certainly looked as though the monkey’s nimble fingers were capable of getting inside anything they wanted. In spite of his fears, Felix could not help being amazed as he watched how the monkeys made quick work of the picnic.
The monkey with the can was getting cross. It let out an ear-splitting shriek of fury as it pulled and pulled at the ring on the can, while only a trickle of liquid came out. Then the monkey shook the can ferociously.
Another monkey, who was eating two bananas at once, and had also picked up a bread roll in one of its feet, came over to see what the problem was, snatched the can from its companion and pulled hard at the metal ring. The Coke immediately exploded in a fountain of dark brown, creamy froth, causing both monkeys to screech even louder in surprise.
Felix was terrified the noise would wake Bibi and the others, but Mo simply raised her finger to her lips and shook her head. He reasoned that there was nothing unusual about a monkey shrieking in the bush, so probably no one would come to see what the noise was about.
And he might have been right, were it not for what happened next.
The monkey holding the can of Coke was clearly very angry at being covered in sticky, frothy fizzy drink, and decided to show exactly how annoyed he was by raising the can above his head and hurling it at the first monkey.
The can landed on his companion’s head which sent him into a fury as well. He whirled around, grabbed a tomato in each hand and lobbed them at the other monkey’s face.
‘Mo!’ Felix called out, not caring now about waking the others. ‘I think we should leave. There are no babies and I’m a bit scared . . .’
But Mo had come out from her hiding place and was clutching her sides and laughing so hard that tears were pouring down her face. Felix was about to exclaim that there was nothing to laugh about, when there was a colossal thud from above his head and more slipping and sliding sounds, followed by another thud . . . and another and another.
‘OH NO!’ Felix cried.
Monkey after monkey after monkey raced past him, causing his branch to judder dangerously. They charged at the food and joined in the fray, screeching and jabbering.
Soon there was a seething mass of monkeys on the picnic, picking up cans of Coke and fizzy orange, shaking them and opening them all over one another, picking up bread rolls and tomatoes and chucking them at each other too. (The bananas were clearly seen to be too precious to be used as ammunition – some monkeys who had not joined in the fight were making off with as many of them as they could carry.) It was now impossible to throw the net over an individual monkey, even if Felix had still wanted to. Which he very much did not.
Of course, the noise was so horrendous by this point that Bibi and Elvis had come running. They shouted at the monkeys and waved their arms at them, shooing them away.
That is the moment when one of the monkeys saw Mo, who was still in fits of giggles, and seemed to decide to make a beeline straight for her.
It jumped on to her back and pulled at her hair, then it pounded her with its little fists, screeching all the while, as if to say, ‘This is all your fault!’
Poor Mo was screeching too now, and crying, ‘Get it off me, get it off!’
Bibi launched himself at the monkey, gripping it by the scruff of its neck. The monkey immediately let go of Mo and began thrashing around to try and free itself. Bibi ran from Mo and threw the monkey into the bush, where it landed, looking dazed for a second. Then it was off, chasing its companions into the trees. The monkeys lobbed the remaining tomatoes and bread rolls at the stunned humans as they ran, gibbering and screaming monkey-insults.
Felix hurtled down the tree and came running to see if Mo was all right. Unfortunately for him, at that exact moment Mum and Zed appeared at his elbow.
‘Oh, dude, what have you done?’ Zed wailed.
‘Felix! Get inside the tent, this minute!’ Mum growled.
Mo was sobbing as she rubbed her sore head. ‘It’s not his fault,’ she whimpered.
Bibi looked very upset. He clearly did not know whether to shout at his daughter or to console her. Instead he said, ‘Well, whose fault is it?’
Felix stared at the ground. ‘I – I’m sorry,’ he whispered.
Then he turned and ran to hide in the tent, leaving the adults shaking their heads in bewilderment.
Peace was restored now the monkeys had gone. Only the Grey Louries could be heard above the gentle click-click-whirr of the crickets in the background.
‘Go-away! Go-away!’ called the birds.
Mum let out the breath she had been holding. ‘Do you know, I think we might just do that,’ she said. ‘I think this camp has had enough of my family for a while.’
Mo and Felix were instructed to clear up the awful mess the monkeys had made. Once Bibi was sure that Mo was suffering from nothing but a few scrapes and bruises, he said he would not listen to any explanations until ‘every single piece of food and every can and wrapper is cleared away’.
The children worked in silence; Mo seething and muttering at the unfairness of it all (‘After all, am I a monkey? Did I make this mess? No, I did not!’), and Felix feeling utterly ashamed that he had made Bibi, Mum and Zed so cross with him.
This is actually all Flo’s fault, he thought as he picked up mushed bananas and squashed tomatoes. I don’t want to give her a cool present now. In fact, I’m not sure I even care if she’s my friend any more.
He felt a rush of heat to his face and battled to keep the tears at bay.
Zed came up behind him. ‘Hey, little dude,’ he said softly.
