Monkey Business

by Anna Wilson

  And there was the whole fascinating world of the canal and the woods lining the tow path in which Felix could lose himself until they reached the boat.

  So even though he was fidgety with impatience he sat back and forced himself to think Happy Thoughts, which ended up being not that tricky, as Felix was always happy when he was with his uncle.

  ‘Hey, Feels! Check it out – a kingfisher!’ Zed suddenly called over his shoulder. Felix followed the line of Zed’s finger and sat up, goggle-eyed.

  ‘Wow,’ he breathed. The jewel-like bird zipped along the still, green surface of the canal and dive-bombed after a fish before vanishing into a small hole in the bank.

  ‘Feeding its family. Cool!’ said Zed.

  Felix found himself wondering yet again how it was possible that Mum and Zed were related. Mum would not have even seen the kingfisher, let alone pointed it out to Felix with such relish.

  But then Zed was everything that Mum was not. For a start he was a man, although he had long hair (sometimes with beads in). And he had a beard (also sometimes with beads in), which of course Mum did not (although she did occasionally wear beads – but they would be round her neck, not anywhere else). And he lived on a boat on the canal instead of in a normal house. And he had a girlfriend called Silver who loved animals as much as Zed and Felix and Flo did. Whereas Mum had a husband called Dad who did not love animals at all, even one tiny bit.

  But it wasn’t just those kinds of obvious things. Zed never shouted or said, ‘We’re LATE!’ He didn’t even wear a watch, as he said, ‘Time is, like, a human construct, man. Nature doesn’t have a watch – have you noticed? But lambs are still born in the spring and snowdrops still come out at the right season. It’s sweet! No need for clockwork.’

  Flo loved Uncle Zed almost as much as Felix did.

  ‘You know I’ve never met anyone with a real-life beard like that one,’ Flo told Felix in hushed tones after her first encounter with Zed. ‘I mean – is it really real? It’s so HUMONGOUS! And all that hair on his head is mega-weird – a bit like snakes or eels. Is that maybe a wig?’

  Felix sighed importantly and said, ‘Of course it’s not a wig. It’s his Eco-Hippy Tendencies, Mum says.’

  Flo pulled a face. ‘What’s an Eeeek-o-hippy? Sounds scary and a bit screechy.’

  ‘Not scary – hairy!’ Felix said, giggling.

  Uncle Zed’s real name was Clive, but he had given up that name long ago when he realized that ‘the name you’re born with is not the name to go forward with into this world’ and that it was important to ‘take on a name that progressed your journey through life’.

  Mum said that was a ‘load of cobblers’ and that Uncle Zed had got his nickname from the fact that he was well known for taking afternoon naps, or ‘catching zeds’ as he called it, and that if sleeping was something that progressed your journey through life ‘Uncle Zed had progressed enough already to earn himself a free travel pass’.

  Felix didn’t know what that meant, and he didn’t really care. As far as he was concerned, his uncle was the best thing about his family, and that afternoon he had two whole hours with him before Mum had to come and take him home to do homework and tidy his room and other dull and awful things that were Frankly Worse Than Death.

  Everything about spending time with Zed was fantastic fun. The boat he lived on (all the time – not just the holidays!) was brilliant, of course. It was painted in a rainbow of patterns and swirls, and was called Kiboko. Felix’s house was just called ‘Number 12’, which was hardly a name. Kiboko meant ‘hippo’ in an African language called Swahili. Felix thought it sounded magical and wished that people in England spoke Swahili instead of English. When Felix was still a baby, Zed and Silver had spent two whole years travelling around lots of African countries and they lived in a huge tent that was so big you could actually light a fire in the middle of it and it wouldn’t burn down. The tent was called a ‘yurt’. Felix didn’t know which was cooler – living on a boat on the canal, or living in a yurt in Africa. He decided that maybe living half the year in one and half the year in the other was absolutely the only solution. That way you would get to see all the best animals in the world: moorhens and herons and kingfishers and water voles in the summer in England, and elephants, hippos and giraffes in Africa the rest of the year.

  ‘We called the boat Kiboko to remind us of Africa: hippos are the horses of the river,’ Zed had once told him mysteriously. ‘That’s what the word “hippopotamus” means, man.’

  Silver grew plants on the roof of Kiboko – herbs and pots of chrysanthemums and even pumpkins in the autumn – and there were two black and white cats, Yin and Yang, who slept on the patchwork quilt on the bed. They were soft and cuddly cats who spent most of their lives sleeping. (Not like Colin who spent most of his life sticking his claws into anything that got in his way.) Best of all there was always a huge biscuit tin in the tiny galley kitchen, full of chocolate biscuits. Felix couldn’t for the life of him think of a sensible reason why the whole world didn’t live exactly as Zed and Silver did.

  The tandem passed a couple of moored boats and a chicken run and approached the familiar little stone bridge near where Kiboko was secured.

  ‘Here we are.’ Zed chained the bike up alongside the boat and waved cheerily to his neighbour who was just taking his own boat back to its mooring.

  Felix smiled. The calm of the water, the birdsong in the air and the sight of the brightly coloured boats reassured him. A proud mother duck was parading her new family of ducklings on the water right alongside Kiboko. This was a world where anything was possible – where the Normal Rules did not apply. Silver hopped on board to put the kettle on the stove and get the biscuit tin out. The sun was beaming, and the cats were stretched out on the roof on their backs, for all the world as if they were trying to get a tan.

  ‘I wish this was my house,’ Felix said, climbing up next to the cats, and flopping down on to his back. It was so warm up there! Yin raised his head and blinked at Felix, stretched, purred briefly and went back to sleep.

  Zed stuck his head out of the galley window and said in a mock-stern voice, ‘Hey, I’ve told you before: Kiboko’s not a house, man. Houses are boxes that hold us in and keep us back. Not cool.’

  Felix peeped over the side at his uncle. ‘So, back to this elephant then,’ he said. He was not going to let Zed get distracted and start talking about Living it Green.

  Zed grinned, and said, ‘Hit me with it.’

  ‘Hit you with what?’ Felix asked, puzzled.

  ‘The elephant idea!’ Zed said. ‘What’s the grand plan, man?’

  6

  ADOPTING AN

  ELEPHANT

  Felix took a deep breath and said: ‘We-ll . . . You know it’s my birthday really soon?’ He looked down at Yin who was purring like a jet plane about to take off, and tickled him under the chin. Silver came out of the galley with two huge chipped mugs of sweet peppermint tea and handed one to Zed.

  ‘Yeah!’ said Zed. ‘Are you going to have, like, a totally massive party with jelly beans and pass the parcel and stuff? Awesome!’

  Silver caught Felix’s eye and smiled in a knowing way that Felix was sure meant, ‘I love Zed, but sometimes he has no idea, does he?’

  ‘Er, we don’t have parties like that any more,’ said Felix, squirming. He didn’t want Zed to think he was being rude.

  ‘Oh,’ said Zed, crestfallen.

  Silver put a hand on his arm. ‘So what are you going to do, Feels?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, Mum said I could have a Special Birthday Outing to a place I could choose. So I said I wanted to go to Africa like you did, but she said it had to be in this country and somewhere we could get to in less than an hour,’ Felix said solemnly.

  Silver bit her lip and nodded.

  ‘So,’ Felix went on, ‘I said if it couldn’t be Africa it did have to be somewhere that had something to do with animals, and then Dad suggested that Shortfleet safari place that’s on the
telly. You know, where they film that Safari Park Live programme with Kitty Bumble and Tim Bogel and they talk about the lions and giraffes and stuff?’

  Silver nodded again.

  ‘So Mum said yes, and I’m asking Flo to come too,’ Felix finished.

  Zed had perked up at the mention of the safari park. His eyes were shining. ‘Shortfleet? Man, that place is cool! They are so into conservationism there – you know, like, looking after endangered species? And the guy who owns it – Lord Basin – he’s a dude. He lived in Kenya years ago. I’ve always wanted to meet the guy . . . Hey! Any chance I could get an invite?’

  ‘Course!’ said Felix.

  ‘Awesome! It’s meant to be, like, massive – a palace! And the Lord dude, he has wild animals roaming around – even inside. And the walls are decorated with mega stuff he’s brought back from his travels. And he wears clothes that are way cool—’

  ‘Yes, erm, talking of that “conversationism” stuff, back to my elephant question,’ Felix cut in.

  ‘Like I said: hit me with it.’ Zed drained his tea in one gulp and slammed the mug down on the roof of the boat. Yin leaped up from Felix’s lap, his startled eyes popping out of his chequerboard face, and scarpered inside to safety.

  Felix scrunched his eyes up tight and took a deep breath. Then he said, very quickly: ‘Flo thinks we should get an elephant of our own to look after. Did you know that people steal elephants and kill them for the Ivory Bits to make pianos and stuff? It’s horrid and—’

  ‘Hold it!’ Zed butted in, holding up one hand like a traffic policeman. ‘Let me get this straight – you want an elephant? Like, for real?’

  Felix nodded. ‘Yes.’

  Zed looked at Silver and then looked back to Felix. He let his hand fall back down to his side, his jaw dropped and his eyes popped open so that Felix could see all the white around the blue. Felix leaned back on his arms, feeling a bit worried about what Zed would do next. Then his uncle slapped his thighs and shouted, ‘An elephant as a pet! Whooo-hoooo! Crazy, man! A JUMBO PET! Like a jumbo JET – geddit?’ He roared with laughter. ‘You kill me!’

  Felix frowned. He didn’t like being laughed at. Not when he had something so serious to talk about.

  Silver looked at Zed and shook her head.

  Zed said, ‘What?’ Then he saw the expression on his nephew’s face and sobered up. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’m still not quite following what you’re saying. You don’t want me to get you an elephant? As in a huge grey pachyderm with tusks and a trunk?’

  ‘Ye-es,’ said Felix. ‘Well, it has tusks and a trunk, anyway. But I don’t know about any packy-wotsit.’

  Silver chuckled. ‘A pachyderm – it’s the name for any large mammal with a thick skin – like a rhino, or a hippo? It comes from the Ancient Greek words pakhus, which means thick, and derma, which means skin.’

  Zed grinned and hugged Silver to him with one arm. ‘The girl knows what she’s talking about.’

  Felix chewed his bottom lip. ‘Did they have elephants in Ancient Greek times then?’ he asked.

  ‘Man, elephants are an ancient species,’ Zed said, looking suddenly grave. ‘That’s why it is so seriously bad that humankind has not looked after them.’

  ‘That’s exactly why Flo thinks we should get one,’ Felix said enthusiastically. He jumped off the roof, clutching the biscuit tin with both hands, and landed heavily in front of Zed and Silver, which made the boat rock a bit.

  ‘Steady!’ said Silver, as she grabbed a mug to stop it falling.

  But Felix was waving his arms about chaotically. ‘Flo said you would know how to get an elephant because you know Nearly Everything About Animals and you’ve lived in Africa in a yurt. I can’t ask Dad as he’s too stressed about his meetings and stuff, and I can’t ask Mum because she already threw a wobbly when I asked her if I could have some chickens or ferrets.’

  Silver raised one pierced eyebrow. ‘Chickens and ferrets, eh?’ she said, placing the mug gingerly back on the water tank.

  Felix carried on talking and squeezed into the space between Zed and Silver, forcing Silver to save the mug again from disaster. ‘Yes. But obviously not together, as the ferrets would probably eat the chickens and that would be no good as I want the chickens to live so that I can have their eggs,’ he explained seriously. ‘You remember me asking Mum about the chickens, don’t you, Zed?’

  Zed was staring out across the canal in a dream. ‘Eh? Chickens? Oh yeah, my sis is not a bird-dude, dude,’ he explained to Silver. ‘She, like, hates all the pecking and clucking and stuff? And she thinks they stink.’

  Felix nodded again. ‘But they don’t – and keeping them is so easy and cheap cos they can live off potato peelings and rubbishy food that humans don’t eat. I looked it all up on the Internet and you can buy a chicken for one pound from the RSPCA.’

  Zed chuckled. ‘Man, you are crazy. Shame you can’t get an elephant from the RSPCA!’

  ‘The RSPCA only has animals from this country,’ Felix explained patiently through a mouthful of chocolate crumbs.

  ‘Wait! I’ve had a cool idea,’ Silver cried. Her bangles jingled madly as she held the mug in midair and pointed it straight at Felix. ‘There is a way you can get an elephant, Feels! Zed and I can do it for you as a birthday present, and you’ll be helping to protect it too.’

  Zed shot Silver an extremely worried look as if she had suddenly gone completely mad. He shifted slightly. ‘Silvs?’ he said quietly, a questioning note in his voice. ‘I don’t think it’s cool to buy any kind of animal off the Internet as a birthday present, that’s way far out. It’s probably not even legal—’

  ‘Hey, chill! You don’t BUY them,’ said Silver, giggling. ‘You ADOPT them.’

  Zed looked at her quizzically for a full beat and then threw back his dreads and howled with glee. ‘Man, of course! That is an awesome idea. Yeah, I’ll do that for you, no worries, Felix. Silvs, you’re a genius.’

  Silver grinned and bowed her head, accepting the compliment.

  Felix was confused. ‘How can you do this adopting thing?’

  Silver picked up her mug and took a long and satisfying slurp. ‘You just need to look up one of the charities on the Internet and choose the animal you want to help protect, and then you send the charity money. Then the charity sends you an email back saying you’ve adopted the animal. You get information packs, newsletters and—’

  But Felix wasn’t interested in the details. ‘Yippeeeee!’ he shouted, bouncing up and down on the water tank. ‘Flo will be soooo excited! And I’ve been desperate for a really interesting animal to look after for ages. Besides, I do sort of need a replacement for Jonah.’

  ‘Jonah?’ Zed asked.

  ‘You remember Jonah,’ said Felix. ‘My goldfish.’

  ‘You must remember Jonah,’ said Silver mischievously. ‘He’s the little guy who went for a white-knuckle ride and didn’t survive.’

  ‘No he didn’t,’ said Felix. ‘Fish don’t have knuckles. Anyway what happened was I had to put him in the loo while I cleaned out the tank cos Merv was using the basin to dye his hair again, and then I got distracted because I saw a woodpecker out of the window, so I went to get my binoculars, and when I came back Jonah was swishing down the loo and it was too late to get him back. I made Dad go and look in the pipes to see if he could find Jonah, but it was no good. We put a cross in the garden so we would remember him forever. It was really sad.’

  ‘Like I said – white-knuckle ride,’ said Silver, squeaking a bit.

  ‘Oh, you didn’t like FLUSH IT, did you?’ squawked Zed.

  ‘No, I did not!’ cried Felix indignantly. And then, quietly: ‘Merv did.’

  ‘Man!’ yelped Zed, clutching his sides. ‘He is one crazy guy . . . OK,’ he said, putting on a more serious face. ‘So you need a pet to replace Jonah and shake life up a bit in the Stowe household.’

  ‘Exactly!’ said Felix enthusiastically.

  Zed leaned over the side of Kiboko and t
hrew the dregs of his peppermint tea into the canal. Felix wondered if all the people who lived on the boats drank peppermint tea and chucked it into the river, and that, if they did, that was possibly why the water was so green and murky.

  ‘There’s just one, like, miniscule kind of nano-problem about this adopting thing?’ Zed was saying. ‘And that is, I, er, I don’t have a computer.’

  ‘Why not?’ Felix asked, leaping up and spinning round and almost losing his balance. He wheeled his arms round and round to stop himself falling into the water and then did a kung-fu kind of chop in the air to cover up for the fact that he looked like a bit of a doofus.

  Zed roared with laughter, and cried, ‘Hey! Watch out – you’ll scare the ducks, man!’

  Felix felt his ears go hot. Then he said a little crossly, ‘Anyway, I thought you did have a computer. I thought that Mum gave you her old laptop because she was going to throw it away, and you said that she couldn’t do that because it would go straight into the landfill place where they bury all the rubbish. And then you said you would take it from her and Reuse or Recycle it so that it didn’t end up ruining the atmosphere with bad chemicals and things.’

  Zed was always telling Felix how important it was to Reduce and Reuse and Recycle. He also said it was important not to own very much stuff, which apparently included not having a telly. Felix thought this was going a bit too far. He could see the point of Reusing, particularly when it came to wearing the same pair of socks over and over again. And he was pretty good at Recycling, especially yoghurt cartons. They made really good caterpillar homes.

  He had never understood what Reducing was, though. Maybe there was a clever scientific way of shrinking things to an almost invisible size, so that they didn’t take up too much room on the planet. If so, Felix thought Merv should put himself forward for it.

  ‘Yeah well, I’m really sorry, Feels,’ Zed was mumbling, ‘but reusing was not going to work with that computer. Your mum was not fibbing when she said that it was broken. I tried everything, man – I even gave it to Piggy – you know, my mate who’s cool with technology and that? But even he couldn’t do anything with it.’