Monkey Business

by Anna Wilson

  ‘Stay calm!’ a voice ordered. ‘The more noise you make, the more excitable the monkeys will be.’

  ‘Stay calm?’ That was Mum, Felix told himself. At least she was still alive. Felix was staring hard at his knees as someone prised a monkey from his head so he couldn’t see what was going on around him. ‘Stay CALM, did you say? I am being scalped alive by fifty-six million apes and you tell me to STAY CALM!!!’

  ‘Yes, madam,’ came the reply.

  Gradually the chattering and shrieking and pulling and scratching subsided and Felix was able to raise his head from his knees and look up to see some people dressed in dark green tops and army-type trousers putting monkeys into cages and helping Felix’s mum and dad and Zed and Flo out of the car.

  The army had come to rescue them!

  16

  MONKEYS

  BEHIND BARS

  The Stowes and Zed and Flo were ushered into a zebra-striped minibus and the caged monkeys were put into a white van.

  ‘Wh-where are you taking us?’ Felix shakily asked.

  ‘We are the keepers who work in the monkey enclosure,’ said one of the green-clad people. Oh, so not the army then, Felix thought. He was glad he had not said anything about the army or soldiers or anything. That would have been embarrassing.

  ‘We’ll take you to First Aid and then there’s someone who needs a word with you. We have to find out exactly what happened so we can make a report,’ another keeper said gruffly. He was a very tall, thickset scary-looking man. A bit like a huge monkey himself, actually, Felix thought. Or a gorilla. In spite of his fear and confusion, a slither of a giggle slipped out.

  ‘I don’t know what you are laughing at,’ Mum said, her voice encased in a thick layer of ice, ‘but if I were you I’d stop right now.’

  ‘Oh, cool it, Marge,’ said Zed. ‘The boy’s stressed. He’s been through enough already.’

  ‘Don’t you “cool it, Marge” me!’ Mum snapped, her eyes glinting dangerously. ‘This is all your fault, Clive. If you hadn’t taken him on all those wildlife-watching expeditions of yours, and if you hadn’t encouraged Felix to keep a fully fledged menagerie in his bedroom, and if you hadn’t adopted him an orang-utan, then perhaps we would not be on our way to face the music at the head office of Shortfleet Safari Park with a head full of fleas and goodness knows what else!’

  Everyone was staring at Mum with their eyes wide open in a terrified expression, and Felix was sure he had stopped breathing. Even Flo was completely speechless for the first time in her life. Her face had gone quite white with fright.

  Felix was worried that perhaps Mum was about to hit Uncle Zed. The driver of the minibus called out cheerily over his shoulder: ‘Sounds like you’ve got a regular David Attenborough in the family.’

  ‘David who?’ Felix asked, feeling braver at the tone in the man’s voice.

  ‘David Attenborough. He’s a famous naturalist. You should watch some of his wildlife films. He did a brilliant series about creatures who live in the sea called The Blue Planet.’

  ‘Really?’ Felix sat up straight, perking up. He leaned towards the driver. ‘Can you get it on DVD?’

  ‘Yeah, mate. I think you can get hold of it at—’ The man broke off when he caught sight of Mum.

  ‘Do you know,’ Mum said slowly and menacingly, ‘I don’t think at this moment in time that we are very interested in that particular DVD, thank you very much.’

  Felix was going to protest, but the sight of Mum with her hair ruffled and her make-up smudged in a clowny fashion and her clothes a bit ripped and that Extremely Dangerous Glint in her eye sort of made him stop and think. He had a sinking feeling that Mum would be keeping a very Tight Rein on his animal-based activities from now on.

  The monkeys had apparently gone to First Aid too. Mum mumbled something about them not needing any medical attention, as they had seemed ‘very much in tip-top condition’. But the keepers were worried that the monkeys might have injured themselves while they were charging around.

  ‘They could have turned on each other if they had become really panicked,’ the gruff gorilla-like keeper told Felix. He led them to a grey Portakabin where they would have their scratches and bruises looked at. ‘What you did was extremely stupid,’ the keeper went on. ‘There are notices all over the park telling you to stay in your vehicle and not to wind down the windows or attempt to feed the animals. Did you not see them? And you should have been listening to instructions on the CD.’

  ‘We did see the notices, and we did listen to the CD,’ Mum said, tight-lipped with fury.

  Flo was crying quietly at this point, and Zed had his arms round her and kept offering her tissues. Her hair had gone into mega-fluff overdrive and she had peanuts in it and mushed-up banana on her face.

  ‘I wish Silver was here,’ she whispered.

  ‘So do I, man. So do I,’ Zed said.

  The keeper told them to sit on some orange plastic chairs and wait for the First Aid people. Felix’s chair had a wobbly leg. He held on to the sides to steady it and felt something sticky under the right-hand edge of the seat. Chewing gum. He prised his fingers free and rubbed them together to get the gum off, but it just made them stickier and stickier.

  Two kindly-looking people came and checked them over and gave them plasters and bandages and made Mum and Dad a cup of tea with loads of sugar in it. ‘For the shock,’ they told them. Felix took a sip and spat it out. Then the keeper came back into the cabin and said, ‘There’s someone wants a word with you lot. Wait here.’

  Felix wiped his sticky hand down his jeans. Mum tapped her foot irritably on the grey lino floor. Flo blew her nose loudly. Zed hummed. Dad coughed.

  A fly buzzed right into Felix’s face and made for his nose. As he was batting it away and starting to get annoyed with its persistent buzzing and nose-attacking, the door to the Portakabin opened.

  The man who entered was more bizarre than any of the exotic species that Felix had seen at the park that day. He was almost as wide as he was tall, he had long grey hair and an even longer grey beard. He was wearing a floor-length coat that looked as though it had been made out of bits of carpet, huge billowy trousers like a genie in a pantomime and his fingers were covered in massive chunky rings. On his head was an Olden-Fashioned-Days type of hat, made of black velvety-soft fabric with golden swirls all over it – and in his right hand he held a posh-looking cane with a silvery top in the shape of a fox’s head. The man looked like an over-the-top version of one of Zed’s mates from down at the canal. Or one of the Wise Men from the nativity play at school. Felix stole a glance at Zed. He certainly looked impressed.

  ‘Well, hello there!’ the man boomed, waving a bejewelled hand merrily in the air. ‘So who’s been the naughty one then? Letting my monkeys into your car? Goodness gracious me, we can’t have that, you know!’ And he let out a huge wheezy bellow of a laugh.

  This man is quite obviously a bit of a loony, thought Felix. He didn’t know whether that realization cheered him up or frightened the pants off him. Did the man really find the situation amusing, in which case no one would get into trouble and they could all just have a jolly good laugh about it (well, maybe not ALL, Felix thought, catching sight of Mum’s thunderous face). Or was this bizarre-looking man about to blow up at everyone and tell them that they were sentenced to fifty-five years behind bars in a dark and smelly prison millions of miles away?

  Felix shuddered. His teacher could be unpredictable like that. Mr Beasley couldn’t actually send anyone to be behind bars for fifty-five years (or even one year), of course, but he did have that rather disconcerting habit of laughing like a hyena when someone had done something he didn’t like, and then exploding with uncontrollable anger two seconds later. Like the time Freya Potts had by mistake let Jeff, the class mouse, out of his cage when it was her turn to clean it out, and the mouse had run right up Mr Beasley’s trouser leg in fright. Mr Beasley had howled with laughter to start with, but the minute Freya admitted that it had
been her fault he went a deep purple in the face and his nose looked a bit sweaty all of a sudden and then his eyes bulged really quite a lot and he shouted, ‘FREYA POTTS! SEE ME AFTER CLASS!’

  He had made poor Freya go around on her hands and knees picking up every single pencil shaving, fleck of dust and stray Bit of Grot off the classroom floor. And that is not a nice job when you are in the same class as Humphrey Darling who is responsible for most of the Grot in Freya’s class, being as he is the Number One World Champion in Nose Picking and Bogey Flicking.

  Felix closed his eyes and took a deep breath and waited for the Mr Beasley-type explosion to occur.

  But it didn’t. The strange man came over to Felix and slapped him on the shoulder and bellowed his great booming laugh again.

  ‘So this is the younger generation’s answer to David Attenborough, is it?’ he chortled. ‘No need to look so terrified, young man.’

  Felix had a sudden exciting thought. Was this man perhaps Father Christmas in disguise? He did sound quite a lot like Father Christmas, and that beard . . . But it was May, so Father Christmas was sleeping, wasn’t he? He shook his head and tried to concentrate on what the man was saying.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ he was asking.

  Mum and Dad were shuffling their feet and staring at the ground.

  He IS Father Christmas! Felix thought, excitement rocketing up from his belly to his face and breaking out in a beaming grin. ‘Yes!’ he cried. ‘You’re—’

  ‘Lord Basin!’ Zed yelled, jumping up and clapping his hands like a little kid.

  ‘Eh?’ Flo said, her face crumpled in confusion.

  ‘What?’ said Felix.

  ‘Lord Basin!’ Zed cried again. He began pumping Lord Basin’s hand in both of his own and burbling: ‘Oh man! I thought it was you, but then I thought, No, the dude doesn’t come out to meet the public like this, and then when you spoke I thought, like, it must be you, cos you’ve got such an awesome voice – and that laugh! No one laughs like that. Except maybe Santa! Hahahaha—’

  ‘Clive,’ said Mum in a low voice, shooting him one of her dangerous looks.

  ‘No, no, no – it’s absolutely tickey-boo!’ Lord Basin said, shaking his head and holding up his free hand. ‘It’s simply glorious of you to say such kind things, my dear chap. And who might you be?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Mum broke in. ‘It’s very nice of you to be so friendly to us after what’s just happened, and I’m sorry to interrupt and everything, but aren’t we forgetting something?’

  ‘What’s that, my dear lady?’ Lord Basin asked, freeing his hand from Zed and taking Mum’s and kissing it.

  ‘Oh, erm . . .’ Mum blushed and Felix put all his effort into not doing his sick-making thing with his fingers down his throat. The man had kissed his mum! Even Dad didn’t do that in public, and he was married to her!

  ‘I – er – I just think that it’s important that Felix and Flora here realize the seriousness of their actions and – well, aren’t you angry about the monkeys, your, er Lordship?’

  ‘Oh, call me Harry!’ boomed Lord Basin, beaming a huge shiny-cheeked grin and winking at her. He bent down slightly to address Felix and Flo.

  ‘So you both let the monkeys in, eh? Fancied one as a pet maybe? Hohoho! What a cheeky pair! You remind me of myself at your age. Er – that is, what exactly is your age?’ he added, looking suddenly rather puzzled.

  Zed chuckled gleefully and Mum rolled her eyes. Dad had found a piece of paper in his pocket which seemed very interesting.

  The keeper who had been very quiet until now, broke in at this point: ‘With all due respect, Harry, what these children did was extremely dangerous and goes against all the guidelines laid down by Shortfleet. There are notices all over the park—’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ said Lord Basin, waving the keeper away impatiently. ‘I think they’ve learned their lesson now, don’t you? You can leave us now, Basil.’ Basil left looking rather disappointed.

  ‘Basil’s right, of course,’ he went on, fixing his twinkly eyes on Flo and Felix. ‘It was a dangerous thing to do. But luckily for you my monkeys are just fine – in fact, if you don’t mind me saying so, it’s you who look the worse for wear after your little encounter. Now, why don’t you follow me and you can get cleaned up properly and tell me exactly why you took it into your heads to plan this little adventure in the first place. Then we’ll see whether you deserve to be punished – or not!’ he added cryptically.

  Felix felt himself sliding into Full Panic Mode. The image of a jolly Father Christmas had been replaced in his mind with an evil gobliny jailor – like that slimy guy in The Lord of the Rings – who was swinging some heavy rusty iron chains and cackling loudly whilst jeering, ‘PUNISHED, MY DEARIES! PUNISHED YOU SHALL BE!’

  He glanced at Flo, but she was still completely silent. Flo could usually talk for England and could probably charm her way out of a tank full of tarantulas, but it seemed that she was no match for a weird old beardy guy in a technicolour dreamcoat and a bucketful of jewellery.

  The Stowes, Flo and Uncle Zed trotted obediently after Lord Basin, out of the Portakabin and across the grounds to the huge house that was at the heart of the safari park. It was a very much more subdued party than the one which had set out earlier that day.

  17

  MONKEY

  BUSINESS

  Lord Basin’s house was as huge as a castle on the outside and as wonderful as a theme park on the inside. It was so wonderful, in fact, that Felix actually realized he was starting to relax as he looked around him. Surely a man who lived in a place such as this could not be a bad type of person?

  ‘Man, this is the most awesome type of awesomeness I have ever dreamed of!’ Zed whispered to Felix. ‘We are getting a PRIVATE TOUR OF THE DUDE’S HOUSE! Just wait till I tell Silvs.’

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me. I like to show off to my guests,’ Lord Basin said bashfully, as they reached the front door. ‘Dear lady,’ he said, turning to Mum and making her blush again, ‘would you be so kind as to press this button here?’

  Mum did as she was told, pushing a button set into the stone wall. The front door immediately slid open, like those doors in supermarkets, except this door was not a boring glass one, but a dark solid wooden one with animals carved all over it.

  On the other side of the door it was just as Zed had said it would be!

  There was even the moving carpet Zed had told them about. Another button in the wall set it in motion: Flo was allowed to press that one. It made her smile for the first time since the monkey attack.

  ‘I’d always fancied one of those flying carpets you hear so much about in charming fairy tales,’ Lord Basin explained, as they stepped on to a length of Persian rug that began moving like a conveyor belt. ‘It’s a so much more efficient way of travelling than simply walking from one end of the house to the other. For example, I am always leaving my glasses in the conservatory, which is at the far end of the house, and then realizing I need them once I am in the library, which is at this end. I used to have to walk back and forth, which became exceedingly annoying and such a waste of time, and so I had this moving carpet installed. It’s rather wonderful, don’t you agree?’

  The carpet passed door upon door in a corridor that seemed never-ending, until finally Lord Basin tapped a swirly bit of the carpet’s pattern with his cane and they came to a stop outside one of the doors.

  ‘Young man, your turn, I think?’ Lord Basin said, pointing to yet another button.

  Zed reached out his hand eagerly, but Lord Basin gently restrained him with a bejewelled finger, saying, ‘I meant the youngest of the young men,’ and nodded to Felix.

  Felix grinned and pressed the button. It made the oak door swing back to reveal a richly decorated room with animal-patterned rugs, cushions and furniture and a huge portrait of Lord Basin himself hung over the fireplace.

  Felix secretly wished they could have carried on exploring the whole building, but it was clear that Lord B
asin wanted them to stop in this room. He gestured to them to sit down on the soft plumped-up cushions. Felix eyed a zebra-striped chair uneasily.

  ‘It’s all right – it’s not real zebra skin!’ Lord Basin said, reading Felix’s thoughts. ‘As if I would have real animal skin in my house – dear me no. My whole life has been dedicated to the preservation of endangered species! But I do like a bit of pizzazz – a bit of bling, you know!’ he added, winking at Mum.

  Mum tittered and it was Dad’s turn to roll his eyes.

  Felix decided that next birthday he would ask for a chair just like that.

  Lord Basin turned to Felix. ‘So who is going to tell me what happened in the monkey enclosure?’ he asked, suddenly very serious.

  ‘It was all his idea,’ Flo blurted out, pointing at Felix. ‘He is obsessed with animals. It is all he ever talks about. And you see he got this actually very stupid idea about adopting an elephant and when he realized that it was not going to work because of how big elephants were he decided to adopt an orang-utan and then that didn’t work either and so he said to me, “Let’s kidnap the monkeys at Shortfleet when we go for my birthday!”’

  Felix was pleased that his best friend had finally found her voice again. But he was horrified at the actual words that were coming out of her mouth. How could she DO this to him? If Flo had not persuaded him in the first place that it would be cool to have their very own elephant, none of this would have happened. He was so shocked he could not find a single word in his brain with which to defend himself. He sat there, shaking his head very quickly and trying to remember how to breathe.

  Zed was staring at Flo in an equally stunned manner.

  Lord Basin did a good job of maintaining a serious expression in the face of his silenced guests and said, ‘Ah . . . so it’s your birthday, young man? Why didn’t you say so? We must have cake . . . lemon or chocolate?’