Monkey Business (3 page)

Mum coughed as if something had got stuck in her throat. ‘I think you’ll find that pianos these days have
plastic
keyboards,’ she said, looking at Felix and Flo in the
rear-view mirror with a tight-lipped smile.

Flo went a bit red. Then she shrugged and quickly said, ‘Well, obviously I know
that
. I don’t have that piano any more, anyway. It was an Olden-Fashioned-Day one. I gave it to
my worst best friend at my old school . . . So, Felix,’ she said, changing the subject in a firm and determined voice, ‘what about this elephant then? Shall we get one, or
not?’

‘No more time to chat,’ Mum said, sounding suddenly a lot more cheerful as she pulled into the school car park. ‘The bell’s about to go – out you get, you two. And
careful when you get your bags out the back. We don’t want Dyson trying to escape.’

Dyson lifted his head hopefully at the sound of his name.

‘Don’t forget,’ Mum added, raising her voice above Flo who was still rabbiting on about elephants. ‘Felix, are you listening? Zed and Silver are picking you up tonight.
I’ll come and get you from the boat after tea.’

Felix flung open the car door and Bernard took his chance, dropping to the ground and slinking off before he could be pulverized by Felix and Flo as they ran in through the school gates,
babbling to each other at top volume just as the bell rang for register.

Felix could not sit still all of that morning. He could not work out whether he was fizzing with excitement at the prospect of a Real Live Elephant coming to stay, or whether
he was full of anxiety and worry about the idea. The more he thought about it, the more he realized it was actually both. An elephant as a pet would mean that life would no longer be boring at
home. Even Merv would be impressed and probably leave him alone once he had an elephant by his side.

But then how on earth did anyone get hold of a Real Live Elephant in the first place? Did zookeepers bring them over from Africa on aeroplanes or on ships? And how did you
get
an
aeroplane or a ship? Did you have to know someone who owned one, or could you just buy a ticket? He knew that there were planes called jumbo jets. Maybe they were the ones for the elephants.

It was very frustrating. Felix had all these extremely important questions that needed answers, and he was stuck in the classroom learning the nine times table.

He looked across the table at Flo who was busily filling in her maths sheet.

‘Flo?’ he hissed.

She looked up at him from under her fluffy blonde mop of hair and frowned.

‘I need to talk to you about this Elephant Thing,’ he whispered.

‘Felix!’ Mr Beasley had magically appeared by his side and was breathing his cheese-’n’-onion breath snortily down Felix’s neck. ‘You will be staying in at
break if you have not finished the worksheet!’

Felix sighed and started filling in numbers at random.

By the time the bell had rung for break, Felix had decided that the whole Elephant Thing was not going to work out. His head was hurting from the nine times table anyway, and
he simply didn’t have enough brain power left to work out how to get hold of an elephant. He ran into the playground with Flo hot on his heels. Once they were safely by the bug bases and away
from the Boys Who Played Football, he turned to face his friend and said, ‘About this elephant—’

‘Yes, I wanted to talk to you too. I have been thinking about it all morning and I have decided we absolutely must do what we can to Progress This Project immediately,’ she said in a
posh, TV-newsreader-type voice.

Felix frowned. ‘No, I don’t agree—’

Flo arched one eyebrow impressively, stopping Felix in mid-tracks. ‘I have actually come up with a brilliant idea which you could say is Foolproof. I was multi-tasking it while I was doing
my maths sheet and I have got it all worked out.’

She backed Felix into a corner and, dropping her voice to a hush, told him what they needed was A Plan of Action.

‘Last week my dad read a book to me about a man who had travelled to Africa and could talk animal languages and brought animals back from Africa to live in his house. He was called Doctor
Dolittle. So you see it must be possible.’

The rumbling feeling Felix had had in his tummy all morning grew stronger. It was panic, he realized. Flo was most definitely On A Roll.

He took a deep breath and said calmly, ‘This book could not have been a true-life story if it said that the man could talk animal languages, cos no one in true life can actually do
that.’

This was a way of buying Felix a bit of time. He did secretly think that there probably
were
people who could talk animal languages, because otherwise how did you explain those people on
the telly who could get seals to understand exactly what tricks to do in those big swimming pools? And how could people train parrots to talk as well? And once he had seen a sign at the zoo which
said ‘wolves talk: 2.00 p.m’. (He did wonder why they only spoke at two o’clock in the afternoon, but there were some mysteries in this life which were not worth bothering to
solve.)

‘Well, it doesn’t matter about whether the animal languages bit is true life or not,’ Flo said dismissively. ‘What I am talking about is getting an elephant.’

‘Yes, but, Flo, no one has ever had an elephant as a pet. Not in England anyway. If they did, it would have been on the news,’ said Felix. ‘And it would never fit inside my
house and we only have quite a small garden at the back.’ He tried to change the subject altogether. ‘Can we talk about apes and monkeys now? Cos I have brought in my book to show
you—’

Flo held up her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Felix Stowe, but I think you will find that I was talking first.’

Felix rolled his eyes.

‘OK,’ he said heavily. ‘So where do
you
think we would keep it? IF we could get one in the first place,’ he added with deep scepticism.

Flo looked up at the sky as if she was talking to someone who had not one single ounce of a brain. ‘That would be
your
responsibility, obviously,’ she said. ‘I
absolutely could
not
have it at my place. My mum has only just finished having the garden designed, and Dad has filled the allotment with new plants. And our garage is completely Full to
Bursting with simply heaps of stuff. But just imagine!’ she said, changing tack hastily. ‘If we had our Very Own wild elephant, we could set it on mean people, like Humphrey Darling. He
would soon learn his lesson and not flick wet tissues and bogeys at us in RE.’

Felix was worried that he was losing control of the situation far too rapidly. Flo was tricky enough to keep up with at the best of times, but today she seemed to be on Planet Janet with the
Weirdos. If the elephant lived in his house, how would he get it to school to set it on mean people like Humphrey Darling, for goodness sake? He could hardly just squeeze it into the car without
Mum noticing.

‘You still haven’t said how we are going to
get
this elephant,’ Felix said, a bit sulkily.

‘Listen,’ Flo said, ‘you are the one who is always saying that you wish you had a pet that was not boring. And you keep telling me you need a replacement for Jonah.’

Poor Jonah. He had not survived longer than a week. Felix missed him rather a lot considering he was only a goldfish.

‘That’s true,’ Felix said, nodding. ‘OK, fine. I’ll ask Zed about elephants when he picks me up. It’s my birthday soon and he’s been asking me what I
want as a present . . . Do you want to come back with us tonight and see what he says?’

‘Nah,’ said Flo. ‘I’m going to Millie’s.’

Millie was a very pink and girly girl. Felix was about to say as much, but Flo gave him another one of her Looks, so he didn’t.

Felix tore out of school at the first sight of his uncle.

‘Hey, dude!’ Zed cried, throwing his arms round his nephew.

‘How do you get hold of a Real Live Extra-Wild Elephant?’ said Felix, gasping for breath and struggling to free himself from the monster bear hug.

‘Heeey! A joke!’ Zed said, slapping Felix on the back. ‘What do you reckon, Silvs?’ he asked his girlfriend. ‘How do you get hold of a Real Life Extra-Wild
Elephant?’

‘Errr. Like, stick it in the fridge?’ Silver asked, twirling one of the long ribbons that trailed from the back of her head like octopus tentacles.

‘Yeah! Those jokes always have elephants in fridges, don’t they, Feels?’

‘NO!’ Felix cried. It was quite frustration-making talking to Zed and Silver sometimes. ‘It’s not a
joke
! I really entirely mean it – how do you get hold of
an extra-wild elephant? To KEEP?’

‘OK, OK – less stress!’ Zed said, putting a suntanned hand on Felix’s shoulder. ‘You can tell me all about it once we’re on the boat.’

But Felix was
desperate
to talk to Zed about the elephant. He was worried that Flo would be asking him for all the details of his conversation with Zed the next morning, so he needed to
talk to him – and fast.

‘But it’s Immensely Important,’ Felix said, hopping from foot to foot.

‘Feels, man,’ said Zed quietly, stooping down and looking deep into his nephew’s eyes, ‘we have all the time in the world, yeah? Let’s save it till we’re out
of this madhouse.’ He nodded in the direction of the hordes of other children streaming out of school towards their parents and carers, all shouting and talking at once.

‘All right,’ Felix said grudgingly. Zed had a point.

He climbed on to the trailer bike that was attached to the back of Zed’s tandem and strapped on the helmet his uncle handed him. This was the way to travel – far better than the car.
Zed was up in front, then Silver, and Felix pedalled on the trailer bike behind them. He loved the way the warm spring air went all whooshy around his ears as they sped off down to the tow path.
That was the other good thing about the bike – you didn’t have to stick to the road, and you didn’t get caught in traffic jams.

And there was the whole fascinating world of the canal and the woods lining the tow path in which Felix could lose himself until they reached the boat.

So even though he was fidgety with impatience he sat back and forced himself to think Happy Thoughts, which ended up being not
that
tricky, as Felix was always happy when he was with his
uncle.

‘Hey, Feels! Check it out – a kingfisher!’ Zed suddenly called over his shoulder. Felix followed the line of Zed’s finger and sat up, goggle-eyed.

‘Wow,’ he breathed. The jewel-like bird zipped along the still, green surface of the canal and dive-bombed after a fish before vanishing into a small hole in the bank.

‘Feeding its family. Cool!’ said Zed.

Felix found himself wondering yet again how it was possible that Mum and Zed were related. Mum would not have even
seen
the kingfisher, let alone pointed it out to Felix with such
relish.

But then Zed was everything that Mum was not. For a start he was a man, although he had long hair (sometimes with beads in). And he had a beard (also sometimes with beads in), which of course
Mum did not (although she
did
occasionally wear beads – but they would be round her neck, not anywhere else). And he lived on a boat on the canal instead of in a normal house. And he
had a girlfriend called Silver who loved animals as much as Zed and Felix and Flo did. Whereas Mum had a husband called Dad who did not love animals at all, even one tiny bit.

But it wasn’t just those kinds of obvious things. Zed never shouted or said, ‘We’re LATE!’ He didn’t even wear a watch, as he said, ‘Time is, like, a human
construct, man. Nature doesn’t have a watch – have you noticed? But lambs are still born in the spring and snowdrops still come out at the right season. It’s sweet! No need for
clockwork.’

Flo loved Uncle Zed almost as much as Felix did.

‘You know I’ve never met anyone with a real-life beard like that one,’ Flo told Felix in hushed tones after her first encounter with Zed. ‘I mean – is it really
real? It’s so HUMONGOUS! And all that hair on his head is mega-weird – a bit like snakes or eels. Is that maybe a wig?’

Felix sighed importantly and said, ‘Of course it’s not a wig. It’s his Eco-Hippy Tendencies, Mum says.’

Flo pulled a face. ‘What’s an Eeeek-o-hippy? Sounds scary and a bit screechy.’

‘Not scary – hairy!’ Felix said, giggling.

Uncle Zed’s real name was Clive, but he had given up that name long ago when he realized that ‘the name you’re born with is not the name to go forward with into this
world’ and that it was important to ‘take on a name that progressed your journey through life’.

Mum said that was a ‘load of cobblers’ and that Uncle Zed had got his nickname from the fact that he was well known for taking afternoon naps, or ‘catching zeds’ as he
called it, and that if sleeping was something that progressed your journey through life ‘Uncle Zed had progressed enough already to earn himself a free travel pass’.

Felix didn’t know what that meant, and he didn’t really care. As far as he was concerned, his uncle was the best thing about his family, and that afternoon he had two whole hours
with him before Mum had to come and take him home to do homework and tidy his room and other dull and awful things that were Frankly Worse Than Death.

Everything about spending time with Zed was fantastic fun. The boat he lived on (all the time – not just the holidays!) was brilliant, of course. It was painted in a rainbow of patterns
and swirls, and was called
Kiboko.
Felix’s house was just called ‘Number 12’, which was hardly a name.
Kiboko
meant ‘hippo’ in an African language called
Swahili. Felix thought it sounded magical and wished that people in England spoke Swahili instead of English. When Felix was still a baby, Zed and Silver had spent two whole years travelling around
lots of African countries and they lived in a huge tent that was so big you could actually light a fire in the middle of it and it wouldn’t burn down. The tent was called a
‘yurt’. Felix didn’t know which was cooler – living on a boat on the canal, or living in a yurt in Africa. He decided that maybe living half the year in one and half the
year in the other was absolutely the only solution. That way you would get to see all the best animals in the world: moorhens and herons and kingfishers and water voles in the summer in England,
and elephants, hippos and giraffes in Africa the rest of the year.