Monkey and Me

by David Gilman

  You can forgive him being no good at DIY when you hear the stories he makes up. Or if he reads to me it’s like going to a film. He does all the voices and even jumps around the room acting. In that respect he’s even better than Mrs Carpenter, who’s a bit limited when it comes to doing monsters’ voices. “Don’t get him excited!” Mum always calls up the stairs when she hears him. “He’ll never get to sleep!”

  And she’s right, I often don’t. Not for ages. Not with all that stuff in my head. It would probably be better for me having a telly.

  It was while I was chewing my way through Mum’s lasagne that the next part of my plan came into my head. What a monkey needed was someone to keep him company until he became comfortable having humans around. That’s called socialising. And obviously that someone had to be me. So for the first time ever, I had to start planning a way of getting out of classes and spending more time at the Black Gate. I could never forge Mum’s or Dad’s handwriting for a note, so I had to find something else. By the time we got to the tinned fruit pudding I had worked it all out.

  If Mark found out that I had messed with his computer I think he would stop me from ever becoming a full-time member of his gang. But helping Monkey was even more important than that. Mum always kept my hospital appointment letter stuck on the fridge with a magnetic picture of a grizzly bear and its cub. While Dad was washing the dishes and watching the sports news on the kitchen telly I slid the letter from underneath the grizzly bear mum’s claws.

  Once you’ve scanned something into a computer you can then save it in a letter file. Then you can type over the date you’re supposed to go for your appointment. And when you’ve printed it out you’ve got a new letter with a new date to give it to your class teacher excusing you from their lesson. I had to spend as much time as possible with Monkey so I thought every afternoon for a week would be a good idea to pretend to have a hospital appointment. So I typed in five different dates but used the same time for the appointment.

  Then I switched everything off, made sure I took the original hospital letter from Mark’s multifunction printer, which had been a very good price from Bad Boys Computer Emporium, and put it back on the fridge when Mum and Dad were sitting down in the lounge watching Britain’s Got Talent, with Mum shouting at the judges.

  Sometimes being scared or nervous can work in your favour. When I handed the letter to Mrs Donovan, our music teacher, the next day she read it and had quite a sad look on her face. And then she smiled and put a hand on my shoulder and said, “I’m sorry you’re going to miss singing today, Jez. It’s your favourite.”

  We’ve been practising ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’ for the end of term concert. She bent down and held my shoulders and said, “It’ll be all right, Jez. We’ll do it again next week so you don’t miss it.”

  She is very caring, is Mrs Donovan, and I felt a bit bad for deceiving her. But I had to get to Monkey and save him and that was more important than anything else. Sometimes you have to give up things that are important to you so you can help someone else. Even singing my favourite song. Well, second favourite if you count ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.

  Getting into Black Gate was less creepy now. It felt a bit like going into your own house. You know where the doors are, you know where the kitchen is. Of course, I hadn’t had a chance to explore the whole house yet, it was still very dark in most of the rooms and there were still shadows that tended to take on different shapes if I looked at them too long. So it was quite helpful to sing the words of the song to myself as I made my way through to the big greenhouse.

  When I emptied my backpack this time I had lots of treats for Monkey. I sat on the sacks and laid out books to read to him, some comics, a packet of fruit and nuts, some Juicy Fruits and a T-shirt, because I thought that, even though he was a chimpanzee, he might be getting a bit cold at this time of year.

  I sat on the sacks and waited. As soon as he heard my voice he came out of hiding and, without even asking, took an apple, and sat right in front of me, as if we were in class together and were going to do a reading project.

  I thought I should keep it simple to start with, so while he crunched away at the apple I started reading from one of my favourite stories about a boy in Africa who makes friends with a lion and then a terrible thing happens and the lion gets sent to a zoo and then the boy becomes a soldier and when he’s fighting in France he sees the lion in the cage and they are reunited.

  But after about a page and a bit the monkey seemed more interested in picking his toenails, which my mum would think was a pretty disgusting thing to do while you are eating.

  “It’s a very good story and I think you’ll find the relationship between the lion and the boy is very similar to you and me,” I told him. But then I remembered when I first went to school that the teacher had taught us all to read using picture books, so I took out one of the comics I had brought with me. That way I could describe the picture and show him.

  “This is the Silver Surfer, who travels faster than the speed of light. See, there’s the Silver Surfer zooming across the sky and he is about to go into battle with Doomsday Man.”

  Every time I explained the picture I showed it to him. He looked, grinned and made that funny noise with his lips again, so I think he was getting the hang of it. Once he had finished the banana, he got up and did a head over heels roll, which I think was his way of telling me he was happy. And then he walked back towards the kitchen, stopped and looked at me, as if he was waiting for me to join him. So I did.

  He scuttled off through the darkened kitchen and back into the hallway. I followed him through the hall, stepping in and out of those creepy shadows and listening as the wind came through the old window frames.

  He chatted and scampered up the stairs, but I wasn’t too sure that I wanted to go up there. There are times when having an imagination is a really bad thing, because what looks like an old light-fitting can suddenly become a snake’s head. The best thing to do in that situation is to tell your brain to shut up – you know it’s only a light fitting and it would have to be something supernatural to turn it into a bone-crushing snake. By the time I told my brain to stop being so stupid I was at the top of the stairs looking down a long passageway that was big enough to have old pieces of furniture in it.

  Monkey was already halfway down the corridor, standing in the shadows. This is where my brain finally won because it was quite obvious that this passageway was the entrance to a monster’s tomb, and, if I walked on those creaking floorboards and opened any of these doors, creatures from another world were bound to devour me. I started singing in my head.

  When you walk through a storm,

  Hold your head up high,

  And don’t be afraid of the dark…

  Sing it louder, I shouted at myself without a sound. Try another song. Maybe it was better to sing something aloud.

  “He’s got the whole world in His hands, He’s got the whole wide world in his hands…” That was more of a whisper than singing.

  By this time the monkey had scuttled back and tugged at my anorak. Then he ran off again, jumping on the tatty old sofas and chairs, making a real game of it. When your brain doesn’t work properly because you’re so scared, you have to try and see things for what they are. There was Monkey playing down the corridor of death. Right in front of the monster’s tomb. So obviously there was nothing scary down there. It was just me. Idiot me.

  I ran after him and watched as he disappeared through an open door. When I went in I saw that this was where he slept. A threadbare carpet covered most of the floor and an iron bedstead with a mattress was pushed against one wall. There was a stain on the other side where it looked as though a big wardrobe had once stood. Tattered curtains hung the length of the tall windows, which had wooden shutters closed across them. And, although they had been boarded up from the outside, there was a small side window where the wooden shutters had fallen off. This was high above the bedstead, and this is where Mon
key jumped up onto the sill. This was his lookout! I climbed up after him and, standing on tiptoe on the bed head, I could just see out. It was high enough to stop anyone breaking in, but I could see all the grounds, the courtyard and the greenhouses and the track that led around from the main gates, although you couldn’t see the gates because they were hidden by all the trees. So from up here it looked as though there had once been a sweeping driveway that curved all the way round to the front of the house.

  This was where he must have been when Mark’s gang and I came into the house and we heard him scurrying across the upstairs landing. Bits of ragged curtains and cushions from chairs were on the bed and it looked as though he had made his own nest. This was his bedroom and he was sharing it with me. It was like a very special den. Him and me – our own HQ!

  I could imagine the house full of chandeliers, not just the old bits of wire that now hung down from the holes in the ceiling – and it was as if all those chandeliers suddenly came on all at once. Light glistened everywhere in my head because I knew that we were safe! If the monkey ran round without being scared then so could I. So I did.

  I aeroplaned along the monster passageway and ran down the stairs and then back up again – until I was so tired I nearly fell asleep. The Black Gate was my castle and I was the king. No one would come here, this was my secret place.

  The monkey chattered and bounced off the walls like a rubber ball and he could run twice as fast as me, but we ran together! By the time we got back to the big old greenhouse I was starting to shake. I shoved a banana into my mouth and drank some water and then just lay back on the sacks. I had to have a sleep and just before I closed my eyes Monkey sat next to me.

  For some reason a name came into my head. It wasn’t very cool, it wasn’t very modern, nothing like a film star’s name, but it just felt right. “Thank you, Malcolm, for showing me how not to be scared.”

  Malcolm Monkey just rubbed his head, scratched his bum and curled up next to me. He was warm, smelly and hairy – and I loved him.

  “Uh!” I gasped. Malcolm had jumped off me and was beating the floor. I thought I’d been dreaming but there was the banana skin and the apple core and the comics. It was almost dark so I must have slept for a couple of hours, but Malcolm was frightened about something and ran off.

  “Malcolm!” But he just ignored me.

  I went after him and saw him scurrying up the stairs towards the bedroom. By the time I got there I was wheezing and I saw this lump under the cushions and curtains squirming. He was hiding from something, but what?

  I climbed up on top of the bedstead and peeped out the window. I could just see a splash of blue and yellow through the trees. It was a police car. I squashed my face against the window pane so I could see further and there was a white van parked just next to it.

  I got a shock. There were three men walking down the track. Two were policeman and the other was an RSPCA inspector. One of them looked up and I fell back in fright. I landed on the bed and heard Malcolm screech. I burrowed under the covers and put my hand on his head and a finger to my lips. “Shush,” I whispered. “There are people outside and they must be looking for you.”

  He burrowed deeper and I covered him with another piece of old lace curtain, then I climbed back up and peeped out the window again. I held my breath and tried to hear what the men were saying. I caught a few words: “No sign of entry in here… boarded up… ready to fall down… death-trap… not going in there, mate…’

  I watched as they walked back into the trees. Malcolm must be a fugitive, wanted by the police. Why? What had he done? Or were they hunting him because he had escaped from somewhere?

  I heard a car door slam and the engine start up. I listened so hard I thought my eardrums were going to pop, but I couldn’t hear anything else. Maybe it was a trap. You know when the bad guys pretend to have left and the good guys come out but there are other bad guys waiting to snatch them? Watching films and reading books teaches you a lot about how horrible people behave. I waited a few minutes, but I still couldn’t hear anything, so I decided to tiptoe out the room.

  I got about halfway down the stairs along the creaking floorboards when I heard something. Someone was whispering. And there was a flash of light from a torch in the downstairs hall. I froze. My stomach felt as though I had swallowed a bucket of ice. The light jigged around and whispers were smothered by the old house as if I had cotton wool in my ears. I turned around and crept on all fours up the stairs to spread my weight and stop the floorboards from creaking. When I got to the upstairs corridor I walked as quickly as I could, went into the bedroom and closed the door, which did creak! My heart jumped. I clambered into bed and under the covers with Malcolm.

  It was almost dark so I could barely see his face, but I could feel him trembling with fear – or was that just my hand shaking as I reached out to comfort him?

  The muffled voices wafted up the stairs from the hall below. I had lifted my beanie above my ears so I could listen. Then I heard a familiar voice:

  “Ouch!”

  “Shut up, Skimp!” another hissed.

  I scrambled out from under the covers and made my way to the stairs. It must be Mark and the gang. I was still quite nervous, you never know what kind of tricks bad people can play, but by the time I was halfway down the stairs I was sure who it was.

  “Don’t be an idiot. Get that light out my eyes!” said Rocky’s voice.

  “I’m here!” I called.

  There was the sound of feet scrambling and by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs the gang was there.

  “Beanie!” Pete-the-Feet said. And then screamed.

  Skimp and Rocky nearly knocked each other over, and the torch dropped on the floor as Mark and Pete-the-Feet backed away, both of them banging into the wall, knocking over a table and ending up in a heap without taking their eyes off me.

  Skimp was pointing at me with his mouth open wide.

  I looked behind me. A small ghost had appeared. It was Malcolm with his arms raised, completely draped in the torn lace curtain.

  Everyone yelled except me.

  And when he made that Whoo whoo whoo noise – which to be fair does sound a bit ghost-like – they all curled up as if a monster had crept out the dungeons. Not that Black Gate had any dungeons – as far as I knew.

  “It’s all right,” I told them. “Look, it’s just Malcolm.”

  As I tugged the curtain off him Malcolm wrapped his arms around me like a scared baby.

  “See? He won’t hurt you. He’s my friend.”

  People tend to state the obvious, so when they all saw Malcolm they pointed and said, “It’s a monkey.”

  Then they got to their feet, but they didn’t come any closer.

  “Beanie, what’s going on?” Skimp said.

  Before I could say anything, Mark, who was always braver than the rest of us, grabbed me by the front of my anorak “You should’ve—”

  But before he could say anything else, Malcolm screeched and looked very threatening. Mark and the others backed off quickly. I soothed Malcolm and he held on to me again. “You mustn’t scare him,” I said. “He’s very frightened and is very protective of me because I’m his friend.”

  “He’s frightened?” Pete-the-Feet said. “Blimey, we were terrified.”

  “No, we weren’t,” said Rocky.

  “You were so,” Skimp said.

  “Shut up, you two,” Mark told them. “All right, Jez, what’s going on?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you,” I said and led them through into the big old greenhouse. Malcolm ran ahead and I smiled at the others but they didn’t smile back.

  I told them everything once they had all sat quietly and it didn’t take long for Malcolm to be more relaxed. He sat next to me, of course, and made sure his shoulder touched mine. The others emptied their pockets and found anything edible. There wasn’t much – a few sweets and a bar of chocolate – but they gave it to me and I gave it to Malcolm, because obviously he
was a bit nervous of them and only trusted me.

  “That’s amazing,” said Rocky. “You’re really brave coming in here on your own. I think you should be made a full-time gang member.”

  “I second that,” Pete-the-Feet said, pulling the hair back from his face.

  “I think he should be banned completely,” Mark said. He was scowling and sat with his arms around his knees. “He disobeyed all the rules of the gang, he kept a secret from us, and he put himself at risk by coming in here. He could have got hurt, he could have been attacked, the monkey might have rabies, anything could have happened. Then we would have got the blame.”

  Skimp had given Malcolm some chewing gum and was showing him how to chew it and pull it out in alongstring, chew it again, and then blow bubbles. Malcolm was getting chewing gum in his fur and I had to help him before it all became matted. I was really using it as an excuse to think as fast as I could because Mark had the authority to expel me for ever and I have to admit he was right in everything he said, except that anybody who knows anything about chimpanzees knows they don’t get rabies. They may have bad breath but that’s as dangerous as it gets – and Mark isn’t the best tooth cleaner around either.

  “He was very frightened,” I told them. “It took me ages to gain his confidence. I couldn’t tell you because if we had all come in here he would have been terrified. Like the first time we came in. Imagine what it must feel like for him to have monsters like us coming out the dark.”

  “That’s a fair point,” Pete-the-Feet said. “We were the ones who invaded his territory.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it!” said Mark.

  “Don’t raise your voice. It makes Malcolm nervous,” I said quietly.