Title Page
JUNGLE OUT THERE
A Suburban Adventure
William Stafford
Publisher Information
Published in 2014 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
The right of William Stafford to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
Copyright © 2014 William Stafford
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Dedication
For Giles
Chapter One
In which we arrive at our new home and meet the neighbours
The hand remembers. It has been years since I last put an actual pen to actual paper and, although unfamiliar at first, the action of writing is stirring memories in my muscles and the quality of my penmanship is improving.
I used to keep a journal like this when I was a teenager. In it I would document the gossip of every school day and give ink to the thoughts I dare not voice. I secreted the volume in my locker, cunningly disguised as a boring old Latin grammar. No one at the Finesse Academy for Young Ladies would dream of picking it up - I would have been mortified and probably sent down too if they had.
What happened to those sensational records of my youth, I don’t know. So much of my life is lost, missing or misplaced. It’s one of the reasons I have taken up this old habit. Another is at the insistence of my solicitor, neighbour and friend, Mr Lyons. He is of the opinion that a first-hand account of my reintegration into civilised society would go like something off a shovel. I said I would give it my best shot just to appease him. I believe he is motivated by the prospect of personal gain - If I make any money I shall be able to recompense him for the many and varied services he has done for me and my family since our arrival in Dedley.
Indeed, since before our arrival for it was he who oversaw the arrangements at this end, he who chartered our passage on the ship that brought us to England, sorted our documentation and hacked through all the red tape like an explorer in the undergrowth with a machete. We are still British citizens after all - well, that counts for my husband, our son and I but I’m not entirely certain how it works with Uncle Mjomba. I think a special licence was granted or something of that nature.
Anyway.
I am trying to select the best point at which to begin our story and I believe it might be the moment when we saw the house on Dedley’s well-to-do Edgar Street that was to be our new home for the first time.
Of course, in England people live a lot closer to each other than they do in the jungle. I was prepared for that but even so it was difficult to wear a genuine smile when Mr Lyons held open the garden gate and ushered me through it.
The dwelling was a semi-detached construction of brick and slate in the typical post-war style. I had seen hundreds like it before in my younger days and it seemed there was no shortage of them in Dedley. To share the building with another family divided only by a partition wall was going to be a new experience - to put it mildly. Come to that, the notion of living within walls at all was also a novelty with which we would all have to grapple. When you’ve spent most of your waking hours out in the open with only the canopy of trees for cover, the confinement of what is here considered ‘normal’ life seems alien and bizarre.
There were trees along the public street but none within the confines of the property’s perimeter fence, and how limited the space that fence contained!
Mr Lyons must have read the disappointment on my face because his own expression clouded over and he cleared his throat apologetically.
“There’s a lot of potential...” He was turning red. “You can do a lot with this garden and,” he made a gesture to a taller gate at the side of the house, “- it’s a lot bigger around the back.”
I walked up the path to the front door; the little stones of gravel tickled the bare soles of my feet. It took me six paces. My husband would take it one leap from garden gate to doorstep. My heart sank. He was still sleeping and so were my son and Uncle Mjomba. Mr Lyons followed my gaze back to the trailer hitched behind his car.
“I’m sure they’ll like it,” he offered his reassurance. “Once they get used to it. There’s always a period of adjustment - moving in - stands to reason - and coming from abroad, well... ”
I touched his arm. It shut him up.
“Mr Lyons,” I was perhaps a little too curt with him, “we have not just come from another country; we have left behind a very different way of life. Our habits and customs are vastly different to yours. I worry that the adjustment may not happen at all.”
He startled me by dangling something shiny and jangly before my eyes - I flinched and he laughed.
“Your keys,” he explained, pressing the objects into my hand. “You won’t get in without them.”
I have seen keys before - Of course I have - and I recognised their function and purpose at once but I have had no use for such things for two decades or so. I laughed. “Oh, we shall have no need of keys, Mr Lyons. We have Mjomba.”
Mr Lyons gave me a look that suggested he found me an amusing idiot. He reclaimed the bunch and held each key up in turn as he named them.
“Front door. Back door. Garden shed. Electric meter.”
I was taking none of it in. I merely smiled and pouted a little. I find this method very persuasive.
“Would you do the honours?” I may even have fluttered my eyelashes. Mr Lyons turned a different shade of red and blustered something about being happy to oblige. His fumbling of the key into the lock might have led one to believe he was as practised in their use as I. At last he pushed the door open with a triumphant exclamation but before we could step over the threshold, the air was rent by a ululating cry.
Mr Lyons froze in terror. I patted his arm again - my turn to offer reassurance.
“My husband,” I explained. “He’s awake.”
The neighbours’ curtains may have been twitching when I walked up the path but at this point they were opened wide as the doors at the rear of the trailer were flung apart and my husband - the most impressive figure of a man, I readily admit! - stepped from the vehicle and onto the road.
He’s a tall man, my husband, well over six feet and rather than having spent his formative years solely in the society of primates, has the appearance of having been raised from birth to adulthood by a community of gym instructors. Barefoot he stood - bare everything in fact, save for his loincloth - and sniffed the Dedley air. The concoction of traffic fumes and the body odour of so many thousands of people living in close proximity was not to his liking. I could tell, even from this distance just by the way he flared a nostril. To him the air was toxic. I hurried to his side and linked my arm in his. His face betrayed no distaste or emotion of any kind but the subtle jut of his square chin spoke volumes to me, his wife of almost twenty years. I reached up and stroked his long golden hair. Sometimes when he’s standing on a ridge or on some lofty limb and the setting sun catches him just right, his whole body seems to be made of gold.
He is worth more than that to me, of course.
I peered around him into the dark cavern of the trailer.
“Son sleep,” my husband’s deep voice rumbled behind his pectorals. “Mjomba sleep.”
It had been necessary to sedate my family in order for them to make the journey and only now were the tranquillisers beginning to wear off. They’ve done many brave things but all within the bounds of the jungle, you see. It was hoped that their introduction to the civilised world could be a gradual and easy one...
I patted his forearm and became aware that three females had appeared at the gate next to ours. The eldest was a frowning, sullen, middle-aged woman wearing eyeglasses and a string of pearls. The others were young girls - her daughters, I assumed. One was almost a young woman and the other about my son’s age. It is so difficult to tell when people keep themselves covered up with clothing. They were eyeing up my husband - as were the other occupants of the street, I have no doubt - but my own appearance was also attracting attention.
I make my own garments, you see, and tend to favour antelope hide for its softness and supple qualities. What I was wearing at the time was one of my more modest creations; there’s a word for it, I believe, and that word is ‘bikini’. Like my husband, I tend to go barefoot but I was sporting a decorative ankle bracelet fashioned from twine and lions’ teeth and I suppose that was catching their collective eye. Around my neck was a choker to match. The jewellery was made and given to me by my husband and are worth more to me than all the diamonds in Africa. Perhaps it was envy I could see in my neighbours’ wide eyes and twisted lips.
I heard one of them mutter, “Look at her hair!” so I shook my chestnut tresses for her benefit. I tend to let the prevailing wind be my stylist in Nature’s salon.
Mr Lyons seemed to rouse himself from some enchantment and, clearing his throat again, introduced us to the females.
“My wife Barbara and my daughters, Alison and Rebecca.”
Mr Lyons had mentioned he had bought for us the house next to his own. I can’t say I take in everything he says. He’s such an unprepossessing little man. Besides which, the modern world assaults the senses at every turn like a particularly virulent swarm of bees; one is often overwhelmed.
Mrs Lyons pursed her lips in a passable imitation of a macaque’s anus. Perhaps I had displeased her in some way. I offered her my hand in friendship. She eyed it like a rotting carcass in the watering hole.
“Barbara, girls...” Mr Lyons persisted with the social niceties, “This is - ah,” his face fell, “- what shall I call you, your ladyship?”
The honorific had an instantaneous thawing effect on Mrs Lyons who flushed and stammered. “Your - l- ladyship?”
I waved it away - with the hand she was now seeking so urgently to clasp.
“Lady Jane,” I beamed at her magnanimously. “But do call me Jane.”
Mrs Lyons was dumbfounded. Her daughters were holding up rectangular objects - tiny television cameras, perhaps, recording the arrival of the new neighbours. They were keeping their instruments trained more on my husband than on me - which is understandable given how sublimely gorgeous he is.
“This is my husband,” I introduced him. “Man, these good people are the Lyons.”
He sniffed the air and looked around. “Where lions?”
I laughed; he is hilarious as well as gorgeous. “It’s their name, silly.”
Mr Lyons was holding out a hand. “Brian. Brian Lyons,” he smiled. He must have been aware of how pasty, paunchy and pockmarked he must look in comparison with my husband. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Man,” said Man, masking his disappointment that there were no actual lions present.
“Er... ‘Man’?” frowned Mr Lyons.
“Not Herman!” I laughed. “Just ‘Man’. Plain and simple.”
“There’s nothing plain about him,” muttered the elder Lyons girl.
“But plenty simple,” I heard her mother add. I was about to ask her what she meant by that when my son emerged from the trailer, rubbing his beautiful blue eyes and scratching his tangled mop of curls. Instantly, the Lyons girls pointed their devices at him and kept them there. He is, as far as I can judge, thirteen summers old - difficult to gauge with neither his birth certificate nor a calendar.
“Hello, Baby!” I put my arm around him. He shrugged me off immediately with the truculence of teenagers the world over.
“Mother!” he grumbled.
“This is our son!” It was my turn to speak proudly. I pushed him forward, presenting him to the neighbours like a prized trophy.
“Let me guess...” said Mrs Lyons and I began to think the sneer on her lips might be a permanent disfigurement, “- his name is Boy.”
“Oh no,” said Baby earnestly, “I would grow out of Boy. My name is Son. Sonny for short - although the word is actually longer, when you think about it.”
“Son smart,” added Man.
“He’ll always be Baby to me.” I squeezed Baby’s cheek and he, adorably, slapped my hand away.
“Well, I think it’s ridiculous,” said Mrs Lyons as if someone had asked for her opinion. “Not to give a child a proper Christian name.” She put her hands protectively on her daughters’ shoulders. They wriggled under her touch just as resentfully as Baby - sorry: Sonny - had done under mine.
“Oh, I’m sure the child may have been christened at some point,” I tried to placate her, “but when he came to us, he was too young to tell us what his name is. I was teaching Man some rudimentary vocabulary at the time and so we called the baby Baby and it stuck.”
It all seemed straightforward to me but Mrs Lyons seemed more and more perturbed the more my explanation continued.
“What do you mean, he came to you? Are you saying he’s not yours?”
“Finders keepers,” said Man with a tone of finality. He pulled Baby towards him. The girls were delighted to get them both on screen together. Mrs Lyons seemed to decide she wouldn’t pursue the story of Baby’s provenance for the time being and concluded by remarking we should at least be able to provide the child with decent clothing.
“This is my best loincloth!” our son protested. He was on the point of removing it when Mr Lyons intervened.
“You’ll all be wanting to get inside and have a look around your new home, I expect.” He made attempts to shepherd us towards our front door while his wife marshalled their daughters, against their will, towards theirs.
Man and Baby had other ideas. They had discovered the larger gate at the side of the house and were clambering over it like a pair of cheeky gibbons.
“You don’t have to -!” Mr Lyons began but all his words dried up when I touched his arm.
“They’re exploring!” I laughed. “Let’s join them.”
I waited at the gate until Mr Lyons got the message and opened it for me. We found Man and Baby jumping on the roof of an outbuilding.
“House small,” Man declared.
“There won’t be room for all of us, Mother,” Baby added. I sent Mr Lyons a concerned look. Had he swindled us in some way? The silly man was laughing - perhaps he was pleased with himself for having successfully carried out his confidence trick.
“Oh, no!” his face was the scarlet of a fresh kill. “That’s only the shed. That,” he pointed to the house itself, “- is your house proper, like.”
Man and Baby stopped jumping and looked at the rear elevation of the edifice. Sunlight glinted off an upstairs windowpane like a winking eye.
“Oh,” said Baby. “That will be better.”
The expression on Man’s face - to my trained eye - suggested he was not as certain.
At that moment we were all startled by commotion from next door. It sounded like murders were being committed in Mr Lyons’s house.
I
n one fluid movement, Man bounded from the shed roof and vaulted over the dividing fence into the Lyonses’ garden. The rest of us hurried to the partition to watch but Man had already disappeared into the house. Mr Lyons, Baby and I stood listening at the fence, wincing and grimacing at every crash, bang and scream.
Mrs Lyons burst from the building, wild-eyed and breathing heavily. Her daughters followed, with their ever-present devices trained on the rear entrance. Mr and Mrs Lyons held hands over the fence - a touching moment, I thought, until I saw it was to prevent her from striking someone.
Eventually, the racket ceased and the house fell silent. A moment later, Man emerged. Mrs Lyons screamed.
“He’s brought that - that thing out with him!”
“That’s not a thing,” said Baby, vicariously wounded by the insult, “- that’s my uncle, Mjomba.”
A word about Uncle Mjomba: Hmm... Where to begin? Well, he’s not what you might call tall, I suppose. His head only comes up to my husband’s knees. Mjomba is the exact same dimensions as your average chimpanzee - with the body hair to match, except - and here it gets a little bit awkward - I’m not entirely sure he isn’t a chimpanzee. I have never seen his face. He always wears a mask carved from wood that covers his entire head. The face is shield-shaped with slanting, staring eyes and a wide, gaping mouth brimming with rather savage-looking, painted-on fangs. The top is covered by a shock of dried grass in a sort of startled lion kind of style, I suppose. And I suppose if one were to come across such a countenance unexpectedly, one could be forgiven for being more than slightly taken aback. So, I don’t blame Mrs Lyons for taking fright. Once she gets to know him she will see what a sweetheart Mjomba is and love him as we all do.
“It should be in a cage!” Mrs Lyons clung to her husband. “It should be in the bloody zoo!”
Uncle Mjomba offered her a placatory banana. The younger Lyons girl stepped forward to accept it.
“Rebecca Lyons!” her mother was alarmed. “Don’t touch it!”
Jungle Out There Page 1
