Monkey and Me

by David Gilman

  He nodded.

  “And give him some breakfast. Coco Pops or something. And toast.”

  I showed Malcolm the palm of my hand held up. I hoped he would understand that I wanted him to stay here. Then I put a finger to my lips again. He just sat down and looked at me. Talking with your hands is really difficult, so all I could do was touch my chest and my lips to show him I loved him.

  Then I gave him my Rubik’s cube to play with.

  They make a real effort at our hospital to help sick children feel as comfortable as possible. That’s what they told me when I first went there. The being comfortable bit wasn’t exactly true because of the treatment, but you get used to it and now when I lie on the bed I look at all the different colours they painted the walls.

  Apparently, the combination of the colours orange and blue has a calming effect and the room I was in had these two colours going around it with quite jolly paintings of cartoon characters. It feels a bit like being in the middle of Toy Story or Shrek. I prefer to have Mum wait outside because it can’t be very pleasant for her seeing me get treatment. And besides, sometimes I can’t help it and I cry, just a bit, and I don’t want her seeing that. I sometimes feel a bit sorry for myself, but then I think of Dad pushing that huge trolley full of letters and I have to tell myself that I’m very lucky that I don’t have to do that as well.

  Dr Mansfield had a new trainee doctor with her. At least I think he was a trainee, because he watched what she did very carefully. She let him have a go and he seemed to be all right. His name was Dr Morgan, but he says I can call him Rick. I tell him he can call me Beanie. It’s probably better to be a bit personal when someone’s sticking needles into you.

  Dr Mansfield is a nice lady doctor and she is the one who looks after me when I go for my treatment.

  “Are you all right, Beanie?” she asked me. “You seem a bit unhappy today. Not that being here is anything to be pleased about, is it?”

  “I’m all right. Did you hear about me trying to save the Sweet Dreams Sweet Factory?”

  “I didn’t, no. Why does it need saving?”

  “Mum used to work there and I haven’t had any Tube Sucks since they closed down. It was also going to be a secret headquarters for the gang I’m in.”

  “That’s very interesting,” she said. But it wasn’t, not to her; she was just being polite as she fiddled with the equipment and checked my chart, while Rick took my pulse with one of those little clothes-peg thermometers that you stick on the end of your finger. Then he put another thermometer in my ear.

  “Nothing in there that I can see,” he said and grinned.

  “Are you saying I’ve got no brain?” I said with a straight face.

  He looked as though he’d sat on one of his own needles. “No, no… I was just…”

  I laughed. And he knew I was teasing. That’s the trouble these days, you can’t say anything that might offend anyone, even if you’re just kidding. Dad says that if you can’t have fun poked at you then you’re going to grow up a really miserable so-and-so. Anyway, it was an old joke. Dad did one much better when I had an ear infection. He looked in with his big torch and blew in my ear. The next thing I knew there was a feather in my other ear. “Head full of feathers,” he said. I still don’t know how he got the feather in there.

  “Your temperature’s up a bit,” Rick said. He picked my beanie up off the chair and looked at it. “This must keep the heat in, like a tea cosy on a teapot.”

  And of course that made me think even more about Malcolm. I was really worried that they weren’t going to get him into the caravan and that the police and the RSPCA were going to catch him.

  Dr Mansfield watched me and I could see she knew something was bothering me – and it wasn’t just the Sweet Dreams Sweet Factory. That’s called perception.

  I had to tell them something otherwise they would scribble notes on that clipboard about me being upset, or that the treatment wasn’t working properly, or that they were going to give me something else, or that…

  “I was doing a school project on chimpanzees,” I told them. “Did you know there’s only two per cent difference in the genes between them and us?”

  “I did know that, actually,” Dr Mansfield said. “They’re what’s called sentient beings.”

  That was a new word I hadn’t heard before, but it sounded quite important in relation to Malcolm. “What does that mean?”

  “Well, it means they have a consciousness, like you and me. They can experience emotions,” she said.

  “Like being frightened?” I asked her.

  “Oh yes. Many animals can sense and experience fear.”

  “And what about feelings? I mean, could they feel the same as I do about Mum and Dad?”

  “Yes, I believe so. Primates are raised in family groups.”

  “So they’d miss their mum and dad if they were separated from them?”

  “I suppose they would.”

  “And they would need someone else to love them and look after them? Because otherwise they could just be sad and lonely.”

  “I suppose so.”

  I was feeling sick by now, though that’s not unusual when I come for treatment, but I think this was like before, when I thought of Malcolm being alone and scared. Whatever feelings I had for him must be pretty big on the sentient scale of things.

  “So it’s pretty horrible when you think that people capture chimpanzees and other monkeys and put them in cages and then take them into laboratories and do tests on them. If someone did that to me I’d be terrified. It’s bad enough coming in here for treatment, where people are nice to me and explain things about what they’re going to do. It’s not very pleasant and it hurts sometimes, but at least I understand.”

  “Is that what you’ve read in your project?”

  I nodded.

  “Well,” she said very gently, “not all experiments and research are done on animals these days. Scientists often use live tissue culture instead.”

  Dr Rick was doing something to the monitor screen that showed the levels of stuff they were putting into me and said, “Yes, but if it wasn’t for animal experiments there’d be no cancer research, no nothing research. You try telling someone really sick that they can’t get cured because someone doesn’t want to test a new drug on an animal.”

  Sometimes you can see what people are thinking when you look at their face. Dr Mansfield’s expression didn’t change that much, but there was a sort of different light in her eyes.

  “I don’t think this is the place to discuss that, do you?” she said.

  Dr Rick shrugged, and started to say: “Look, all I’m saying is that if there are no experiments…” He stopped because he realised Dr Mansfield must have been warning him with that look. He glanced at me, and then lowered his eyes. I could tell he was embarrassed. “I’d better just go and check some stuff outside,” he said and left the room.

  I think Dr Mansfield would like to have said a lot more. I think she was kind enough that she would have wanted to tell me that someone like Malcolm had not been harmed in order for me to get better. But she just gave one of those encouraging smiles and made sure the tube was taped properly to my arm. “There,” she said, “won’t be long now. You’ll soon be home.”

  It couldn’t be soon enough. I knew now more than ever that I had to save Malcolm from getting hurt.

  Dad always comes to the hospital and he’s the one who thinks of a joke afterwards. Mum laughs too, but she doesn’t do the cracking-up laugh that Dad gets before he even finishes the joke. It drives everyone crazy. He’s almost there, almost at the end of the joke and he’s in fits. He laughs so much that I always start laughing with him. The tears roll down his face and I’m creased up because I can’t help it. He’s snorting like a donkey, Mum is trying to drive and I’m screaming for him to tell me the end of the joke. When he eventually gets there it’s usually a rubbish joke. I don’t know what he thought was so funny to start with – but you have to laugh
.

  I usually lie flat out on the sofa after I’ve had my treatment. I feel rotten – but not as rubbish I’d feel if Dad hadn’t done his daft act. Sometimes I throw up, sometimes I don’t.

  “Jez? Use the downstairs loo,” Mum called after me.

  “No, I’m all right!” I shouted back as I went upstairs. I felt awful, and I knew I was going to puke sooner or later, but I had to see if Malcolm was still in the house. My room looked as though a hurricane had hit it.

  Mark was sitting in front of the wardrobe and put a finger to his lips.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “We couldn’t get Malcolm to come with us to the caravan. He went bananas. I managed to corner him and get him into the wardrobe,” Mark said.

  “You’ve trapped him? He’ll be terrified,” I told him as I got down on my hands and knees and pulled him out the way.

  Mark grabbed hold of me. “Listen, if he’d have got out the room he would have been gone for ever. I had to get him in there.”

  I squeezed the door open a bit and put my face in the crack. “Whoo whoo,” I whispered. “Malcolm, it’s me – Beanie. Don’t be frightened.”

  A hairy finger came out the wardrobe and touched my nose. The door burst open and Mark and me fell backwards. Malcolm was all over me, screeching and howling.

  “Shut him up!” Mark hissed.

  I tried. But you know how it is when you have an excited chimpanzee running around your room.

  When you’re sick and go to our hospital they always give you a handful of sweets to suck. I pulled a lollipop out and gave it to Malcolm. The quickest way to keep a child quiet is to give it a sweet. I’ve heard Mum’s friend, Mrs Wallace, tell her that, and she should know – she’s got four – but Mum doesn’t agree with that, I’ve heard her say it’s too much sugar. I think Mum is wrong. Malcolm sucked the sweet like it was the last thing he’d ever eat.

  I was just about to pick him up and put him back into bed when the doorbell rang.

  Mark and I froze. No one comes to our house during the day except the man to read the electricity meter and he was here last week. There were muffled voices downstairs.

  “Jez? Are you all right, love?” Mum called.

  Mark nodded furiously. “Tell her you’re OK, otherwise she’ll be up here looking for you.”

  I shouted back. “I’m fine, Mum, I’m just looking for something in my room.”

  “Then can you come down a minute?”

  Mark and I looked at each other. Who was at the door? Mark climbed up onto the bunk bed and looked out the window. “It’s the police. Maybe they interrogated Tracy. She must have told them about Malcolm,” Mark said.

  “No, she’d never have done that. She wants to be in the gang. She would have just stood there and used sign language. And how many people can understand that? Only Malcolm – that’s how clever he is.”

  “You’d better go,” Mark said.

  I stroked Malcolm’s face and whispered to him, then put my finger to my lips. He had the lollipop in his cheek and the stick poking through his grinning teeth.

  “You have to be quiet,” I tell him.

  He copies me, putting a finger to his pouting lips.

  I place the other sweets in the wardrobe and he follows them.

  “He’ll be quiet for a bit, but watch him. Don’t let him choke,” I told Mark.

  “What do I do if he does?”

  “I don’t know… try mouth-to-mouth.”

  Mum was whispering. The two policemen were in the doorway. I could just hear what she was saying: “We’ve just come back from the hospital.”

  I stopped halfway down the stairs and listened. The policeman looked at each other. “If he’s sick, we really need to know about it. We know he’s been at the Black Gate house because sniffer dogs found his trail. And there’s a monkey on the loose which we think might be sick.”

  “Monkeys? Around here? Don’t be daft,” Mum said.

  I was right! Malcolm must have escaped from a laboratory. Maybe they’d given him the plague or something. Being with us must have helped him. He certainly wasn’t off his food.

  Mum lowered her voice, like she always does, when she tells people about me. The cops looked uncomfortable. I had to go downstairs and talk to them otherwise they might start searching the house and then they would definitely find Malcolm.

  “Jez, love, these policemen need to ask you a couple of questions. Are you feeling well enough?”

  I wasn’t, but I nodded anyway. Anything to stop them coming inside the house. I just hoped Mark and the sweets kept Malcolm quiet for the next couple of minutes. I could see the policemen felt a bit awkward. One of them looked at me, not really at me but at my bald head – I’d forgotten to put my beanie back on.

  “You were at the Black Gate, weren’t you, son?”

  “Yes, I just wanted to use it as a den. I didn’t break anything, did I?” I said as innocently as I could.

  “No, you didn’t, don’t worry about that. Did you see anything unusual in there?”

  “No, but two men asked me the same question,” I told them, because I thought if Malcolm was on the run then those other men might be after him as well. If I could get the police looking for them instead that might take their attention away from Malcolm.

  “You were talking to strangers?” Mum said. “I’ve told you before, Jez, don’t talk to strangers in the street.”

  “They just asked me the same question and I told them the same answer. Which was that I didn’t see anything.”

  “And what did these two men look like?” one of the policeman asked me with his notebook in his hand.

  So I described Potato Face and Comb Head.

  This seemed to interest them because they were very careful to write down everything I told them.

  I couldn’t resist asking: “Does the monkey have a name?”

  “It’s only a monkey, son. They don’t have names.”

  Mum was looking a bit worried by this stage, and put her hand on my forehead. “I think that’s enough now,” she said to the policemen.

  “If we could just ask a few more questions,” one of them said.

  I knew if they carried on they might trick me into saying something, and in that moment I felt quite grateful for having been to hospital that day.

  I vomited all over the front step and their shiny black shoes.

  That got rid of them.

  There’s one good thing about being sick – I mean really sick, not just pretend-stomach-ache sick so you don’t have to go to school that day – and that’s being fussed over the rest of the day. You can have anything you want, provided you don’t get sick again, and watch DVDs all day.

  And that means that Mum can usually get a day off work. Once she knew I was OK, she left me lying in front of the TV and went out to the local shops, and that gave me time to go back upstairs and see how Malcolm was. It was a crucial time and I knew we’d never get away with having Malcolm in my room for another night. We had to think of something.

  “They’re going to shoot Malcolm,” Mark said. “Because if they’ve infected him already with a deadly virus then what else are they going to do? One thing is for sure – you shouldn’t be anywhere near him,” he insisted.

  I sat down next to the wardrobe door. A crunching and slurping sound came from inside.

  “There’s nothing wrong with Malcolm, I’m sure of it. And even if there is it can’t be infectious because none of us have come out in any spots or rashes and your flesh hasn’t turned to jelly and we haven’t got any blood coming out our eyes and ears.”

  “You had that nosebleed!” Mark said.

  “I always have nosebleeds, you know that.”

  “I just don’t see how we’re going to smuggle him out the house,” Mark said. We could hear sucking noises from inside the wardrobe, but the lollipops weren’t going to last for ever. Mark looked out the window. “There’s a cop car parked around the corner. They’re watching us. They must susp
ect something.”

  “We have to ask Tracy what happened,” I said.

  “Well, we can’t phone her because she can’t use a phone, can she?” said Mark.

  “She’s deaf, not blind! Text her.” How was he ever going to run the country if he couldn’t think of that?

  “I don’t have her number,” he said.

  Neither did I. Well, you can’t get everything right all the time.

  “Phone Skimp and tell him to get Tracy and meet us down at the caravan,” I told him.

  “How are we going to get Malcolm there?”

  “I don’t know yet. Can you drive Mum’s car?”

  “Dad showed me reverse and first gear,” he said.

  “That might look a bit suspicious going backwards and crawling at five miles an hour,” I told him. There was a fluttering of butterflies in my chest that just would not settle. They migrated to my stomach and then came back again. I think this is what Dad might have been talking about when he said we shouldn’t be scared. I was scared all right because we were very close to Malcolm being discovered.

  “Always look on the bright side of life,” Dad would often say. That’s probably what made him a popular postie. Or he’d sing: When you walk through a storm hold your head up high – all of that stuff; or he’d say: “Every cloud has a silver lining”; and “You never know what’s round the next corner”; and his classic line was always: “Remember these four words when you’re feeling down – This Too Will Pass.” He had tons of things to say about being cheerful as long as we didn’t mention Michael Owen.

  And then just when I couldn’t keep my head up high while I was looking for a silver lining, and knowing exactly what was round the next corner – the police – Dad, as always, arrived just in the nick of time.

  Because he had been up since four that morning and was working a double shift, which is called Bike Route Two, it meant he usually came home between shifts. He’s supposed to go back to the sorting office, but because of ‘circumstances at home’ they usually let him stop off and have a cup of tea and see everything is all right. What he usually does is have an hour’s sleep.