Monkey and Me

by David Gilman

  What to do?

  Think, Beanie, think!

  I watched the dashboard’s digital clock. The seconds and minutes just kept disappearing into some kind of electronic cyber hole. Time just wouldn’t slow down and give me a chance to work things out. It had been two hours since we drove out the yard and now it was three in the morning. I had never been up this late, not even when we went on the Channel ferry to Disneyland in France.

  I just wanted to rest and cuddle up to Malcolm. He lay there watching me. He couldn’t sleep either. Did he have a memory? Could he remember what they did to him? I touched his face. Then I clenched my fist and moved it in a circle on my chest. I’m sorry.

  He pointed at me, then put one hand in the other and tugged. That meant I was his friend. He wrapped his arms around me. I could feel him trembling. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to reach through the curtain and tap the driver on his shoulder. I would tell him everything and he’d feel so sorry for Malcolm that he would drive us exactly where we needed to go. Which was where? To tell the truth, I had given up the idea of getting to Africa. Getting this far had had been difficult enough. I would have to find an animal sanctuary and maybe the driver knew where one might be.

  But of course I didn’t tap him on his shoulder. That would have been incredibly irresponsible. He would have got such a fright that he might crash the lorry and then we would be in an even bigger mess.

  The driver shifted gears, and when I peeped back through the curtain I saw that we were heading up a slip road for a motorway service station. Mist settled across the dark trees and the motorway lights were smothered and dull. The driver took the exit that said ‘lorries’ and slowed right down, then carefully, just like Dad used to do, eased into a space. We were surrounded by blacked-out lorries, huddling in the darkness, like Malcolm and me.

  When the driver switched off the engine and his lights, he climbed down and headed through the narrow channel between the parked lorries towards the motorway café’s fuzzy lights and then disappeared from view.

  I eased Malcolm out the bunk, got him onto my back and climbed down. The air-assisted seat sighed. It was cold outside the cab and the smell of diesel stung my throat. If anyone had figured out that we might have been in one of the lorries leaving McKinley’s then we needed to find another way of escape. A change of vehicle, that’s what they did in the movies.

  Limping, I edged along the gaps between the lorries. Most of them had curtains drawn across the windscreen and side windows, as drivers slept in their cabs. I was struggling with my leg and Malcolm’s weight. Sweat made my beanie feel like a wet cat on my head – all soggy and scratchy.

  I was worried about Malcolm, he didn’t seem to be that well and I was sure he needed more food. Trouble was, I only had thirty-three p in my pocket. I was keeping the apple we had left for a real emergency. I took Malcolm into the trees and untied the piece of T-shirt from my leg. The bleeding had stopped but it looked red and puffy. Anyway, the strip was enough to wrap around a thin tree and tie onto Malcolm’s harness that he still wore.

  He looked a bit alarmed so I spoke to him quietly. There was just us and the weird lights in the fog, so no one would see him if he stayed quiet. Even if he squeaked a bit it should be all right because of the whooshing sound of the motorway traffic in the background.

  “You stay here,” I said, but used my hands as well. “I’m going to get you some food and a paracetamol.” Though I didn’t know how to say paracetamol in sign language.

  I zipped him up in my fleece, and when I looked back the mist and shadows had camouflaged him completely. I felt a horrible tug inside my stomach. It was as if I was abandoning him – and he didn’t know that I was coming back. He was just a small chimpanzee all on his own, tied to a tree in the fog at a motorway service station. How brave was that?

  I ran.

  The girl at the till had a stud in her nose, and another one in her tongue. I didn’t think she was really interested in serving anyone at that time of the morning. She clicked her tongue and the metal stud tapped against her teeth. For a second I thought of Tracy and wished she was here so she could talk more to Malcolm. I’m sure she’d be able to make him understand a lot more than I could. Tracy only had one stud, though, and this girl looked as though Dad had been at her with his DIY staple gun.

  I was trying not to panic.

  The girl looked at me. “I’m not allowed to sell you medicine at your age.”

  She was suspicious! If I opened my mouth too wide my heart would have jumped out and lain wobbling on the checkout counter. I smiled. That kept it below throat level.

  “Oh, they’re not for me. They’re for my dad. He just came in and got those bars of chocolate for me. There he is, the man in a leather jacket carrying his take-away coffee,” I wheezed. It was either nerves or the damp.

  She bent forward and looked towards the exit of the café area, where the man was going out towards the cars.

  I couldn’t get the voice in my head to shut up: Don’t panic! Be natural. Play it cool. That’s called being nonchalant.

  “I said I wanted a banana and he said that while I was here I should get him some paracetamol for his headache. Because he’d forgotten to buy some.”

  She looked at me as if to say, “Oh, yeah?”

  I smiled.

  She didn’t. She clicked. And held up my banana. “Only one?”

  “I’m not that hungry,” I said.

  She sighed, holding out her hand for my money. “You’re short,” she said.

  “I know, but my dad says I’ll grow taller when I get older.”

  She stared at me like a zombie. The dark rings under her eyes weren’t make-up.

  “Whatever,” she said and took the banana back. “Thirty-four p for the banana, thirty-two p for the paracetamol.” She gave me one p change.

  I looked at her, uncertain whether to plead for the banana.

  “What?” she grunted. “You said you weren’t that hungry. You can’t have both.”

  There’s not a lot you can do with one p, so I put it in the Flying Ambulance collection box. You never know when you might need them and it does no harm to have made a donation.

  And if she ever goes out in a lightning storm with all those studs, she might be thankful as well.

  My hands were shaking something terrible. I got a plastic water bottle from a dustbin and headed to the toilet to find a tap. Providing I didn’t put my lips on the rim of the water bottle, I didn’t think I would catch the plague or anything. Though the way I was feeling, I might have had it already – what if Sweet Dreams Sweet Factory really had been a biological warfare site? What if Mum had lied? Maybe that’s how I got sick in the first place! My mind wandered as I filled the bottle in the toilet’s tap below a sign that told me it was drinking water.

  Back outside I got a fright. The yellow lights soaked into the fog like kitchen towel soaks up spilled orangeade. It looked horrible, like the whole world was sick. The mist swirled and shapes changed. I couldn’t find him.

  “Malcolm?”

  I heard a small cry. He sounded frightened.

  “Malcolm, I’m here, I’m here… where are you…?” I had to push through the mustard cloud. Then suddenly I saw his face peering out beneath the tea cosy. Droplets clung to his fur and the fleece, he looked like a sugar-coated doormat.

  As soon as I reached him he clung to me and we held each other. It was like he was asking me never to leave him again and I was promising I wouldn’t.

  It said on the packet of paracetamol that if you’re under twelve you should only take half a tablet. I didn’t know how old Malcolm was and I was worried that if I gave him the wrong dose I might hurt him. But he was definitely not well. I didn’t even know if chimpanzees could have paracetamol. But then I remembered Peacock’s Feather. She always got a really bad allergy every spring. Her nose used to run, her eyes would close, she’d get lumps all over the place. The vet was going to charge Mr Peacock more than he paid for his
Sky subscription to give her injections so he went down to Superdrug and got a packet of antihistamine off the shelf, and fed her those. She was soon back to being a total lunatic.

  I gave Malcolm two tablets. If he had survived one of Mum’s Valium, these shouldn’t hurt him.

  He was wheezing and I didn’t know if it was due to the fog. I untied him just as a lorry’s headlights caught us. For a second I froze. Then they dimmed, the engine stopped but the sidelights were still on. A shadow jumped down and ran into the fog behind the trailer. I only hesitated for a second because I realised the lorry driver had pulled in and ducked behind his trailer for a quick pee.

  “Come on, Malcolm, that’s our new ride,” I told him, grabbing his hand and walking as quickly as I could to the lorry. If the driver had only stopped for a quick pee we didn’t have much time. I climbed up on the passenger side and opened the door. It was a Renault Magnum, considered by some to be a top-spec vehicle – the King of the Road, that’s what Dad always called them – though I didn’t have time to explain that to Malcolm.

  The cab smelled warm and stale, like my bed at home when I read under the duvet with my torch. I pulled Malcolm up into the bunk behind the curtain that was already closed. There were a couple of fluffy toys on the dashboard and pictures of a pretty girl with big eyes and an even bigger smile. One of them was stuck on a piece of card, and in different coloured crayon it said Daddy’s girl.

  It was quiet in there, like a secret place where no one can find you. The door opened and the driver thumped into the seat, slammed the door and made a shivery noise because it was cold outside. The engine started, the lights stared into the fog.

  We were on our way again.

  Once we got onto the motorway it seemed that the fog was lifting, but we were going slowly, the big engine droned on and on as the driver kept it in low gear. It was going to be ages before we got anywhere.

  The driver leaned forward in his seat, gazing into nothingness, searching for tail lights. I remembered Dad doing that – watching for anyone in trouble who’d stopped in the fog.

  Malcolm was quiet, his eyes only half open. He held the palm of one hand flat and then tapped it with the other. I nodded and made the same movement with mine. I’m happy too, I told him in my head.

  He put his hand in mine and closed his eyes. I was burning hot now. Maybe it was the warm cab. My head banged onto my chest, I struggled to keep my eyes open. I couldn’t stay awake. Maybe I didn’t have to. The fog was our invisible shield. No one would ever find us now.

  The clock on the dashboard said 03.58.

  We were safe.

  I closed my eyes.

  It felt like I was asleep for hours. Maybe even days. You can’t imagine how complicated all my dreams were. I was exhausted when I woke up.

  There was a sudden hiss.

  Then silence.

  I peeped through the curtain. The clock said 04.03. I’d only been asleep for five minutes! Malcolm was still asleep, wheezing like the wind through the eaves of the Black Gate.

  The hissing was the air brakes. The lorry had stopped and the driver had gone, swallowed up by a blue swirling cloud outside. I was still groggy and I couldn’t believe there was an ice-cream van parked in front, and that the driver had got out for something like a double whippy chocolate flake. Which, in this freezing fog at four o’clock in the morning, was a serious ice-cream addiction.

  It wasn’t an ice-cream van.

  The police car and ambulance had blocked us in. Policemen wearing yellow striped jackets came towards us – and there was another man with a big net, big enough to catch a whale in. I must have still been dreaming. Mum and Dad got out of the police car, but one of the policemen extended his arms and held them back. Anyone would think this was a dangerous situation.

  I think it was, for Malcolm.

  I shook him gently – we could still make a run for it. “Malcolm, we’ve got to go. Wake up.” He barely moved when he looked at me, and then he pulled the little fingers on each hand down across his chest. I tried to remember stuff that Tracy had told me. “I don’t know what you’re saying,” I whispered. I could feel tears sting my eyes. “I don’t…” I told him again.

  How can you love someone so much and not understand what they are trying to tell you? Then I remembered. He was telling me he was sick. My friend was really sick and I couldn’t help him any more.

  I was trying to get my brain to work, but my head was on fire and the cut on my leg was thumping faster than my heart. This was it – no Piccadilly, no Scott’s Bar, no Great Escape.

  The door opened a crack and a policeman put his head into the cab. He was dripping wet and the freezing air suddenly filled the cab. He smiled. “You’re Jez, aren’t you? It’s all right, son, we’re not going to hurt your mate, but he’s sick and we have to get him to hospital.”

  Drizzle distorted the windscreen. There was a weird-shaped man holding the net.

  “No! You’re going to do experiments on him!” I shouted.

  He hadn’t moved, or made a grab for Malcolm.

  On the end of the policeman’s nose there was a drip of rain, which he wiped away. “I promise we won’t do anything like that. He’ll be all right… hang on a second.”

  He closed the door and I saw him walk towards Mum and Dad, who were huddling from the drizzling fog, and he also called out to someone else, waving his arm to another policeman – there must have been dozens of them surrounding us but I could only see three or four.

  They brought out two men from another police car. The policeman said something to Dad, who nodded, and then came towards the cab.

  I was shivering. Shaking from head to toe. There was no way I could escape with Malcolm now. The cab door opened and Dad stuck his head inside. He didn’t try to grab me or anything. I pulled Malcolm closer to me. If I held on to him they would have to drag us out together.

  Dad rolled his eyes. Just like when he saved me from the top of Sweet Dreams Sweet Factory. “All right, Jez?”

  I nodded, but I think I was doing that anyway because of the shakes.

  Dad turned the ignition key and flipped on the headlights and the wipers. The blades swished away the rain.

  “See those two ugly blokes?” he said.

  I stared through the windscreen and saw the policemen standing with men in handcuffs. It was Potato Face and Comb Head!

  “They stole Malcolm and thanks to you the police have caught them. But Malcolm is sick, son. He really is. You have to let them help him.”

  It was very quiet. Just Malcolm’s breathing and my teeth chattering. It was so hot in there.

  Dad reached in and lifted me from the bunk. He didn’t even pull a face or anything with the effort, he’s so strong he could probably have done it with one hand. Then it was freezing cold and the drizzle tickled my face. Dad held me close to him, just like I carried Malcolm. It was all a bit swirly. The motorway traffic was going past, the police had flickering warning torches, the ambulance had a bar of blue and white light dish-dashing backwards and forwards. Mum said something that I couldn’t hear. Maybe all the fog had got into my ears. Then a man in a green jacket with a yellow stripe across it put a survival blanket around me. It was like being a chicken wrapped in silver foil ready for the oven. But I wasn’t free-range any more.

  The policeman smiled, tugging the blanket a bit more over my head.

  “Those men won’t be stealing any more animals, Jez. We’ve been after them for a long time. Once we knew you’d been hiding where your dad used to work we put two and two together and checked all the CCTV cameras on the motorway service stations. We saw you climb into the cab. Now, you just relax with your mum and dad. Everything will be all right.”

  Dad turned so I could see the lorry. A policeman and another man – I bet it was the RSPCA inspector – lifted Malcolm down from the cab and wrapped him up as well. Dad was about to step up into the back of the ambulance, Mum was already inside. Malcolm was being put in the white van right next to
me – RSPCA Animal Rescue. I wanted to tell them he’s not an animal. He’s nearly one of us.

  Malcolm looked at me. His long bony fingers made a sign.

  “I love you too,” I told him.

  Everything went fuzzier. The fog must have been getting thicker. Car doors slammed, the white van disappeared, a police car started up. I heard crackling voices over a radio. The ambulance driver said something into his handset. The police car led us out onto the motorway, its flashing light like a propeller churning it along.

  Dad still held me so I could see through into the ambulance’s cab. In front of us red tail lights shifted to one side as a siren made everyone get out of the way.

  Someone must have needed help.

  Sometimes I’m amazed at how easy it is to wake up. One minute you’re in dreamland, the next you wake up into another sort of dream. It’s like there’s someone tugging you back. I lay still and let the bedclothes snuggle around me. Mum and Dad were there. Mum had puffy red eyes from crying and it looked as though Dad hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. And he shaves every day, so something must have kept him busy.

  I had to tell Dad something. I knew I would hurt his feelings, because I’d heard him say things to Mum when he thought I couldn’t hear him. He was always talking about the way things were before.

  Before.

  I thought he might be living in the past. And you know there are some things you just can’t change. Things happen, you don’t want them to, but they do. And they’re not always nice things either.

  “Dad,” I said.

  He held my hand. “Yes, Jez?”

  My voice sounded like a whisper. “I’ve been thinking about something really important.”

  He looked at me. I didn’t know if I had the heart to tell him.

  “What’s that, son?”

  I curled my finger and he put his face close to mine so only he would hear. “Now that Michael Owen has retired I don’t think he’s ever going to come back and play for us again,” I said.

  His face crumpled a bit. I think he was being very brave. There were tears in his eyes, but then he smiled. And kissed me.