The Beak Speaks

by Jeremy Strong

  The chimp lifted one leg and piffed, so I showed him how to cup a hand under his armpit and make a ‘spluurrrgh!’ noise. He began leaping up and down and howling. He obviously thought it was a pretty good trick, but he was getting a bit too noisy. I reckoned if I gave him some food, he’d calm down. He looked as if he needed feeding up anyway. Now that I’d had time to study him a bit more closely, I realized how thin and manky he was. His fur was all matted and big chunks were missing. I don’t know if it had simply fallen out or if he’d been in a fight.

  I got a banana from the fruit bowl and peeled it for him.

  He stuck it in his ear.

  Dinah thought all this was hysterical. She screeched away, banging her head on the floor of her cage. She does that sometimes. She’s a bit loopy.

  I got another banana, took a bite of it and then handed it to the chimp. This time he ate it properly, although he did put the skin on top of his head. It looked like a little yellow starfish. Cute!

  The chimp seemed to like me. He kept reaching out and touching me, tugging at my dressing gown, so I took it off and helped him put it on. He thought that was great and lay on his back kicking his legs in the air.

  He slid across the floor and came and sat right next to me, looking into my face. He touched my chin and pinched my nose. He pulled my ears. Then he climbed on my back.

  He was all warm and hairy and tickly. I couldn’t stop laughing. I got up and we went galloping round the room with the chimp bouncing about on my back. Halfway round he leaped off and when I turned to see where he’d gone he was swinging from the lampshade!

  ‘Get down, you idiot!’ I said. ‘Get down before you break it.’

  Then there was an awful scrunging noise and the whole light fitting came loose. It didn’t actually break – it just came away from the ceiling and dangled down into the middle of the room. The chimp let go and went and sat on top of the TV instead.

  I was beginning to think that this chimp was causing a bit too much trouble. I tried to get the light fitting back up, but even if I stood on a chair I wasn’t tall enough. Besides, the chimp kept trying to climb up me, like King Kong on the Empire State Building.

  I gave up and flopped on to the settee. The chimp came and lay there with his arms round me. I was exhausted. I don’t know how long we were there, but I must have fallen asleep. I remember hearing Dinah and the chimp making quiet noises at each other, but it was the scrabbling from the fireplace that finally woke me up.

  I opened my eyes and realized that Dinah’s cage was wide open and there was no sign of her. Then there was more noise from the fireplace and I was just in time to see the chimpanzee disappear up the chimney, still wearing my dressing gown.

  7 Dinah: The Dark House

  Well! I’m brave, of course I am, but The Dark House? Whoa! That was creepy. I don’t like creepy. I can look at spiders but that doesn’t mean I want to touch them. I can look at worms, if they don’t wriggle. But I don’t like creepy, and the idea of The Dark House sent feather-rattling shivers right through me.

  Mark had fallen asleep. He looked almost angelic – very odd. But Arnold was going on and on at me about The Dark House. It was obvious he wasn’t going to give up on trying to get me to go there and see for myself.

  He didn’t seem to notice that I was getting the heebie-jeebies. He had pulled up a chair and now he stood on it and carefully opened my cage. He reached in and pulled me out. Oh yes! Pulled me out, just like that.

  Have you ever been pulled out of your cage by a chimpanzee? I don’t suppose you have. Well, some doctors think that our personalities are formed from the experiences we have. I had just been removed from my nice, safe home by a large flea-bitten chimpanzee that had fallen down the chimney, and that was a very strange experience indeed. If I seem at all odd to you in the rest of this story, then blame it on Arnold Teabag.

  He held me out behind his back. ‘Can you see where the leak is?’

  ‘Arnold, of course I can’t see. You’re wearing Mark’s dressing gown.

  Besides, you do not have a leak. You suffer from wind. That is all. It’s harmless, but often smelly. Polite people do not talk about such things.’

  The chimpanzee hung his head. ‘It’s The Dark House. It makes us go crazy. We forget what the real world is like, and we start to imagine things.’

  You know something? I came over all motherly. I actually began to soften towards Arnold. I mean, he was OK. So maybe he was weird at times, but he did have an excuse, and we were just about to go and visit it.

  ‘Fly up the chimney,’ said Arnold. ‘I’ll follow.’

  I flew. There was not much else I could do, with a hulking chimpanzee following me. Arnold went skedaddling down a drainpipe and set off at a lope across the silent back gardens while I flitted from one tree to another.

  ‘I’m losing my beauty sleep over this,’ I told him, but he just kept on at a steady pace. I followed in silence until at length he came to a halt in a dank and gloomy garden, overgrown with weeds, brambles and the great, black, wet leaves of some monstrous plant that appeared to be invading everywhere.

  ‘This is it,’ Arnold announced, in a barely audible whisper.

  Did I say I didn’t like creepy stuff? The house I was looking at wasn’t creepy. It was bone-meltingly terrifying. A smell of death and despair drifted from its walls. It was gaunt and gloomy. The windows were blank rectangles of darkness. Ivy clawed the walls like a million tiny green, scrabbling hands, plucking and pinching the bricks.

  From inside came strange, haunting noises – howling and hissing, whining and whimpering, rustling and scratching and the sound of endless, secret digging.

  ‘You hear the digging? That’s Garbo. She’s a lynx. Lovely creature, got sweet little tufts on her ears. She’s digging a tunnel. It’s her fifth one. She won’t make it, but she doesn’t give up hope. Everyone is desperate to escape.’

  ‘But you have escaped,’ I said. ‘Why come back?’ This was a good question. After all, I’d escaped too, but there was no way I wanted to go back.

  Arnold looked at me. ‘These animals are my friends. Not just the other chimps, but everyone. I want the whole lot released. Do you mind if I ask you something? When you close your eyes can you see anything?’

  ‘No. Everything goes dark when I close my eyes. That’s what is meant to happen.’

  The chimpanzee gave a low sigh. ‘I see things sometimes. I see trees. I see leaves and branches flashing past me. I see green. I think I’m going mad.’

  ‘You’re not going mad, Arnold,’ I said softly. ‘The things you’re seeing are like dreams or memories. I think you are remembering your days in the forest.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a good thing to remember.’

  ‘I’m not mad?’

  I swallowed hard. I was going to say, well, yes, you are a bit mad actually, as chimps don’t go around gulping air because they leak – and that’s just for starters. But I didn’t say that.

  ‘You’re not mad, Arnold.’

  He smiled briefly and then stared at the house. ‘Come on.’ He quickly scaled the drainpipe and slipped down the chimney. I tried to ignore my thunderingly terrified heart and followed him into the stinking darkness.

  I wasn’t at all prepared for what I found, and I should have been. After all, Arnold had already warned me. Not only that, I had been there myself. I had lived there and suffered it.

  The room was full of cramped, filthy cages. Chimps were crammed into some, monkeys into others. They huddled against each other, silently staring at Arnold and me. A faint fluttering made me look up and there, upon shelves going right round the room, were dozens of tiny cages full of birds. They hardly had room to stretch one wing, let alone two.

  The nightmare had returned. I knew this place. Oh yes. This had once been my home, my prison. I was scared. I was angry. I was gagging on the stench of cages and animals that hadn’t been cleaned out in months. Arnold put a finger to his lips and signalled
me to keep quiet.

  ‘Are there many more?’ I whispered.

  ‘Every room. The house is stuffed. They’ve all been smuggled in.’

  My heart almost stopped beating. My captors were at it again, only this time on a far bigger scale.

  ‘There are vampire bats upstairs, thousands of them, and vultures. In the kitchen there are snakes and lizards. South American frogs in the toilet, hyenas in the garden and a hippopotamus in the bath.’

  ‘A hippopotamus!’

  ‘Shhh! Don’t squawk.’

  ‘Excusez-moi! I do not squawk! I’m a ladyffffff…’

  A long, hairy arm suddenly shot out as Arnold clamped his smelly hand over my face. It was too late. A woman’s voice drifted down from above. This time I turned to stone. I knew that voice. Oh yes!

  ‘Jaundice? Did you hear something? We’d better take a look. Get out of my way you stupid oaf!’

  ‘Sorry Mistress Divine, sorry.’

  Footsteps on the stairs – Arnold slipped back into the chimps’ cage, made a zip motion across his mouth and pointed to the curtains. I flew up and hid. A moment later the door creaked open and the light was switched on.

  It was her all right. She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen – tall and elegant, with short, spiky blonde hair that set off her high cheekbones. Her green eyes sparkled like jewels. She looked completely out of place in that hell hole. It was difficult to believe that she could have anything to do with such a sordid place. But I knew better. I had once been imprisoned by Divine.

  Waiting behind her, as always, was her partner, Jaundice, the one who did the dirty work. Divine had the evil ideas but she made Jaundice carry them out. He was short and stocky. His head looked as if it had been hammered on to his shoulders with a pile driver. All that thumping and thudding had made his ears stick out and his nose stick in. He had bandy legs and long arms with massive hands on the ends, like the great clanking clawing buckets you get on road diggers.

  So, the pair of them were now running an illegal animal racket. They made thousands of pounds by selling the sort of wild animals that couldn’t be found in any pet shop, creatures that were in danger of extinction or too dangerous to be kept in ordinary homes. And while they were waiting to be bought, the animals were shackled in The Dark House. Disease had taken hold and was spreading rapidly.

  Divine scanned the room carefully. ‘Another dead monkey,’ she hissed. ‘Give the body to the hyenas to eat, Jaundice. If they don’t stop dying, we shall have no animals left to sell. They need to be treated. I must put my plan into action at once. Come on, there’s nothing going on here. Put out the light.’

  The light went off and the door was shut. I flew down to the chimps’ cage, trembling. ‘Divine has a plan,’ I whispered. ‘Do you know what it is?’

  Arnold shrugged. ‘She wants to catch a vet. What kind of animal is a vet?’

  ‘It’s a kind of human.’

  ‘Can you eat him?’

  ‘No, Arnold, you can’t. Don’t you understand? Vets are people who look after animals. Divine wants to catch a vet who will cure all the animals here, so that she can sell them.’

  Arnold cheered up considerably. ‘That’s good! We shall all get better!’

  ‘Yes, you will get better, but it isn’t good because you will still be prisoners and you will stay in cages for the rest of your lives. Heaven knows what she will do with the vet once she doesn’t need him any more. She won’t let him go in case he tells everyone what she’s doing. I smell trouble and danger.’

  Arnold lifted his head and sniffed noisily. ‘I can only smell widdle and dung,’ he said. ‘What do trouble and danger smell like?’

  I ignored him and gazed around the dreadful room. One by one the animals turned to look at me from behind bars. Their eyes pleaded silently. ‘We’ve got to do something before it’s too late.’

  Arnold sidled across to me. ‘I already have a plan.’

  Amazing! Arnold the Chimp Chump Champion had a plan! Maybe he wasn’t such a nincompoop after all. My hopes began to rise. Together we would do this thing! Together we would release all the animals, overpower Jaundice and Divine and destroy The Dark House forever.

  ‘You have a plan? What is it?’

  ‘You and I are going to stop her,’ he announced, just as if he was suggesting we went shopping.

  ‘That’s it? That’s the whole plan?’

  Arnold flashed a pleased smile at me. ‘Yes! Simple plans are always best,’ he said. ‘I can see you’re impressed.’ He lifted his leg. ‘Excusez-moi,’ he murmured, ‘as I believe you Frenchies say.’ I held my beak.

  My brain was racing. We had to do something, but what could a brain-dead chimp and a small mynah bird with a smattering of French manage against such evil villainy? And what was Divine’s plan? I had a nasty, uncomfortable feeling that something terrible was about to happen.

  8 Mark: Dad Falls in Love, I Think!

  Dad woke me up. It took ages to realize where I was and then I had to work out how I’d got there. Dad stood there holding Tamsin while he waited for me to get the sleep out of my eyes and my brain.

  ‘Interesting night?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Was it a good party?’

  I hadn’t a clue what he was going on about. Dinah gave a little chirrup and suddenly everything clicked. Her cage – it had been empty! The door was still wide open, but she was back in there. There had been a chimpanzee – no, that bit must have been a dream. After all, the chimp had swung from the…

  … Oh. It wasn’t a dream. The light fitting was still dangling just above the floor. There was soot all over the place.

  ‘I can explain,’ I began, wondering if I could.

  ‘I’m listening,’ Dad said quietly.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep. I came downstairs and there was a chimpanzee in here.’

  ‘Of course there was,’ agreed Dad, and I sighed with relief.

  ‘You believe me!’

  ‘No, of course I don’t, but do go on, Mark. It’s such a good story, isn’t it, Tam?’

  ‘There was a chimpanzee. It went up the chimney. It was wearing my dressing gown.’

  ‘Oh well, that should make it easy to spot. I’ll ring the police and tell them to watch out for a chimp wearing a child’s dressing gown.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Mark! It’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it?’

  Dinah ruffled her feathers. ‘Arnie!’ she squawked.

  ‘And what about this light? I suppose the chimp swung on it, did he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you weren’t being a chimp yourself, fooling around to discover what it was like to be a chimp?’

  ‘No!’ I tapped my hair angrily. ‘I’m a leopard, Dad.’

  Dad studied me in silence and then shrugged. ‘OK, if that’s your story, so be it. But if you think you’re going to help me at the clinic this morning, then you’re going to have to get this room spotless first of all. Understood?’

  Tammy reached towards the light flex. ‘Want to be a monkey, Daddy’

  Dad glared at me. ‘See what you’ve started? Oh, and by the way, why is Dinah’s door open?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘There’s a banana skin in her cage. Did you give her a banana last night?’ I shook my head. ‘OK, let’s try to work this out. Dinah opens her cage, something she’s never managed to do before. She flies out, grabs a banana that’s too big for her to carry by herself and takes it to her cage. She peels it, no doubt using her incredibly useful and clever wings, eats it and throws the skin to the floor of her cage because we haven’t been thoughtful enough to provide her with a litter bin.’ Dad beamed at me. ‘Is that what happened?’

  ‘It was the chimpanzee,’ I grumbled. ‘He put the first one in his ear.’

  ‘Oh, Mark, please!’

  ‘He did, Dad. He put it in his ear.’

  ‘Mark, chimps are intelligent animals. They don’t put bananas in their
ears.’

  Obviously, there was no point in trying to convince Dad, so I spent the first part of the morning sorting out the front room. I had to leave the light for Dad. It was almost half past ten before I could go across to the surgery and by that time things were pretty busy. I like it when it’s like that because I can learn loads more things about treating animals.

  Dad usually explains what he’s doing as he goes along, but this morning Dinah wouldn’t stop interrupting. She was making such a fuss and throwing herself against the bars of her cage. It might have been because we had a snake in the surgery, although she’s never been scared of snakes before, and this one was pretty small.

  It had been brought in by some amazingly beautiful woman. She was tall and elegant, with her hair cut very short and a bit spiky. Maybe that sounds ugly, but it suited her. The moment she entered, the room filled with her scent. It was like a meadow in full flower, fresh and light and lovely

  Dad definitely thought she was Wonder Woman! He couldn’t take his eyes off her. My heart was starting to pound and I was wondering if maybe, maybe, maybe this was the woman for him! Could it be? He was certainly taken with her, and she seemed pretty friendly towards him.

  Dinah was screeching so loudly you’d think she was being swallowed by a crocodile. She flapped about, banging against the sides and rattling her beak across the bars. She kept screeching something at us. It sounded like ‘darkuss’ or something.

  ‘Your bird’s very noisy’ said the beautiful lady.

  ‘It might be your perfume, or perhaps the snake is scaring her,’ Dad answered. ‘Mark, put the cover over her, will you? This is my son. He usually helps out on Saturday.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mark. Interesting hairstyle, and I can see you get your good looks from your father.’

  Wow! I shot a glance at Dad. He was crimson! Come to that, I could feel myself blushing too. Dad frowned and fiddled with the box the woman had brought.