AniMalcolm

by David Baddiel

  “Yes,” said Malcolm.

  “What about us?”

  “Yes! Us!”

  “Us. Us three!”

  Malcolm looked up, knowing what he was going to see: the heads of the three Dollys, poking over the sty wall.

  “What do you mean, cat?” said Ludwig. “When you say this pig is a boy?”

  “Well …” said Zsa-Zsa.

  “Hold on,” said Malcolm. “How come you can speak to each other? Do you speak pig as well?”

  “No,” said Mabel. “Ludwig speaks cat. He speaks all the ’malanguages.”

  “The what?”

  “The ’malanguages. Short for animalanguages.”

  “Yes,” said Ludwig, grandly. “I do.” He then said, “I do” in cat, tortoise, sheep and dog. All of them sounded to Malcolm just like the words “I do”, said over and over again. Except when he said it in dog, which Malcolm didn’t understand because he hadn’t been one. It sounded a bit like he was saying “sausages”, but Malcolm thought it was best not to say that, as he thought it wasn’t a word Ludwig would like much.

  “Anyway,” said Zsa-Zsa, “the point is—”

  “And us!”

  “Yes, we’re here too!”

  “Yes! Or at least, on our way!”

  Malcolm looked round. It was Benny and Bjornita’s voices, but he couldn’t see them. He could hardly hear them.

  “Don’t worry,” said Zsa-Zsa, “they’re halfway across the field. They’ll get here eventually. So. Point is – well, you explain, Malcolm.”

  So Malcolm explained the whole thing to Ludwig and Mabel: the situation with K-Pax, his transformation into all the animals he’d been so far, the fact that he had been given three days – with two remaining – to find a way of getting back to being human, and the possibly unnecessary information that during his time as a sheep he had been convinced he was about to be made into chops when in fact he was only getting sheared.

  “Hmm …” said Ludwig. “I have never seen K-Pax. But I too have heard stories about this goat.”

  “That he turns people into animals?” said Malcolm.

  “No,” said Ludwig. “Stranger than that.” He leant in closer to Malcolm, whispering. “That like a human … like, indeed, Gavin the human …”

  “Yes?” whispered Malcolm.

  “He has a beard!”

  Malcolm nodded. “Yes. Well. He does. But—”

  “Oh my goodness! It is true!”

  “No, but—”

  “And a moustache?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh.”

  “Look, never mind the facial hair. Can you talk to K-Pax? See if you can persuade him to undo the spell? He won’t speak to me.”

  Ludwig looked for a second slightly embarrassed. “No. I’m afraid goat is the one ’malanguage I’ve never mastered. It’s very tricky. Lot of back-of-the-throat hawing.”

  “Right. So. What should we do?” said Malcolm.

  “It’s an unusual situation, certainly. It requires all of my great wisdom.”

  “Thank heaven then that you are a pig of great wisdom,” said Mabel.

  Ludwig turned, and began walking up a series of piled-up logs on to the top of the pigs’ sleeping area, a small hutch in the middle of the sty. The rest of the animals waited and watched, with bated breath. Ludwig reached the flat surface of the hutch. He stopped. He sat down. He surveyed them all, puffed out his chest, and said:

  “Bring me … a manky apple!!”

  “Will you …” said Mabel, “… use the manky apple to cure the boy of his pigginess?”

  “No!” said Ludwig.

  “Will you …” said Bjornita, “… use the manky apple to convince K-Pax to change the spell?”

  “No!” said Ludwig.

  “Will you …” said Dolly 1.

  “Yes, will you …” said Dolly 2.

  “I say, will you …” said Dolly 3.

  “Look,” said Ludwig, “I’m hungry. I can’t think straight on an empty stomach. Bring me the stupid apple. And make it manky!!”

  Trotsky jumped up, rooted around in the trough, brought out an apple34 in his mouth, bounded up to the roof of the hutch, and dropped the apple in front of Ludwig. Who proceeded to eat it, slowly, and with a big “I’m thinking” look on his face.

  “Excuse me!” said Malcolm, while this was going on. “I don’t know what the best thing to do is. But I think if I can just go home … if I can just get to my mum and dad … they’ll know what to do.”

  Over to the west, the sun was beginning to set behind a small wood.

  His second day was running out.

  At this point, Malcolm felt like he might cry, but he didn’t want to cry in front of all the animals. Luckily, he didn’t, because pigs don’t have tear ducts. So he just said, his piglet voice breaking a little: “Yes. I’m sure they will.”

  All the other animals looked on with concern. Apart from Ludwig, who while Malcolm had been talking had just been snuffling loudly around the manky apple. It was now finished, although a bit of manky core was still stuck to his snout.

  “Right,” said Ludwig, looking up. “To the horses!”

  “We’re still coming!” said Benny.

  “We’re on our way, don’t worry!” said Bjornita.

  “Yes, nearly ther— Hang on, where are you lot going?”

  “Sausages, sausages, sausages,” said Trotsky. But they were already well past the tortoises.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” said Bjornita, beginning to turn round. “They’re heading for the horses!”

  It took a little while for all the animals to get to the horse field. Trotsky was there first, followed by Zsa-Zsa. Then the Dollys arrived, but they didn’t stop and carried on running past, quite a long way. Trotsky ran after them, shouting, “Come back, come back!” but – possibly because the sheep didn’t speak dog – they just carried on running away. Eventually he had to run past them and herd them back to where they were meant to be.

  Luckily, this meant that Ludwig and Mabel and indeed Malcolm had enough time to catch up, arriving just as the sheep came back. Malcolm himself had found it difficult to keep up, as he was only a piglet, with tiny little piglet legs (carrying quite a fat little piglet body).

  Ludwig stopped and surveyed the scene. Malcolm tried to see as best he could, above the fence posts. He thought he could make out, through the wire and grass, five horses in there – two brown, two black and one white.

  “Right, Fatty Bum-Bum!” said Ludwig. “What we need to do is—”

  “Please don’t call me Fatty Bum-Bum.”

  “No, but I have explained to you that I am trying to make you embrace your pigginess.”

  “And I’ve explained to you: I’m a boy. Called Malcolm. That’s why we’re here, by the horses. Isn’t it? You’ve got a plan to get me back to my human parents …”

  There was quite a long pause after this, while Ludwig coughed and snuffled and looked around. Eventually, Mabel said:

  “I think he’s right, Ludwig.”

  “All right, Mabel. No need to rub it in.”

  “Ha-ha-ha,” said Zsa-Zsa, “the oh-so-clever pig, the cleverest of all the animals, got confused!”

  “Shut up, cat! Right. OK. Let’s start again. Ahem. So …” Ludwig took a deep breath. Then he let it out again. “Look, can I call you Fatty Bum-Bum anyway? It’s such a nice name.”

  “Malcolm.”

  Ludwig sighed, with a sense of ‘you don’t know what you’re missing’. “So … Malcolm,” he said. “Here’s my plan. You go to sleep. You wake up as a horse. Then you run home to your parents.”

  Trotsky and the Dollys made admiring noises35 about this plan.

  Mabel sighed with love and awe. Even Zsa-Zsa looked impressed. And she – like all cats – never looked impressed.

  “Yes. It’s a good idea,” said Malcolm, choosing not to mention that he’d thought of it ages ago. “OK. I’ll give it a try.”

  And with that, h
e rolled on to his side, put a hoof under his head, and shut his eyes.

  However, after five minutes, Malcolm could feel he was very much still awake. He opened his eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” said Ludwig.

  “I can’t sleep,” said Malcolm.

  “You can’t sleep?” said Mabel.

  “No,” he said. “I’m normally good at sleeping. And when I was a cat, I was extra-good at it.” Zsa-Zsa looked smug about this. “But I think I’ve been doing too much sleeping since I became an animal. I don’t feel tired at all.”

  “Hmm …” said Ludwig. “We’ll just have to sing you a lullaby!”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. It’s the one we’ve sung to all our children. Close your eyes again, please …”

  Malcolm did as he was told. And then he heard Ludwig singing, in a low voice, to a lullaby-like tune, these words:

  Go to sleep, little piggy

  Dream of mud, little piggy

  And apples so manky …

  Then Mabel joined in, about an octave higher:

  Go to sleep, little piggy

  Curl up like your tail, little piggy

  Be as still as a piggy banky …

  Then all the animals joined in. The sheep were actually harmonising.

  Sleep, sleep, sleep, little piggy

  Don’t worry about snoring, little piggy

  Because the noise you make all the time

  Is a bit like snoring, anyway …

  Then, just Ludwig again, with a big operatic flourish:

  It’s snorting!!

  Which is like snoring!!

  Like snooooorrrrri—

  “No, sorry,” said Malcolm, opening his eyes, and cutting off Ludwig’s final long note. “I don’t think that’s going to work.”

  “Oh,” said Ludwig. “It always does normally.”

  Malcolm looked out on to the field. Behind the horses, he could see that the sun was almost completely down now. Only a few red rays shone through the trees.

  “I think … we haven’t got time to wait until I’m sleepy. If the three-days thing is right, I’ve only got two nights left …”

  Ludwig took this in. Mabel and Trotsky and Zsa-Zsa and the Dollys all looked stumped. Then Ludwig turned to the field, and shouted:

  “Snowflake! Snowflake!”

  Seconds later, the ground was shaking – and seconds after that, the white horse that Malcolm had only distantly glimpsed had come over to the fence. From his position, near to the ground, the horse looked like a giant fairy-tale horse, one that might at any moment grow a horn, or wings.

  “Neigh!” said Snowflake. Malcolm remembered that he hadn’t been a horse, so couldn’t speak their language.

  “Neigh neigh neigh,” said Ludwig. “Whinny whinny long hard blow out through the nostrils shaking my head at the same time whinny whinny neigh.”

  “Neigh-whinny!” said Snowflake.

  “Blue and yellow?” said Ludwig, in his own language.

  “Yeah,” said Snowflake. “You’ve just asked me what colour hat my mum wears on a Tuesday.”

  “Have I?” said Ludwig. “Hmm. I may need to brush up on my horse.”

  “It’s OK. Luckily, I speak pig.”

  Ludwig looked a little put out by this, but carried on in his own language all the same.

  “Fine. How would you like to be ridden by a pig?” said Ludwig.

  “What, you? You’d break my back!”

  “That’s kind of you to say,” said Ludwig, who seemed only too pleased when anyone made reference to his weight. “But no.” Malcolm felt Ludwig’s snout on his back, a type of pointing. “This little fellow. Name of Malcolm.”

  “Malcolm? Sounds like amiddle-aged bank manager with three kids who plays squash at the weekends.”

  “I know. I offered him Fatty Bum-Bum, but …”

  “Ludwig,” said Malcolm. “Please. We don’t have long.”

  Ludwig sighed, but nodded. “He needs to get to the city. Quickly,” he said.

  Snowflake looked down. His long nose and his big brown eyes came very close to Malcolm’s face. “Why’s that, little chap?”

  “That’s where my mum and dad are,” said Malcolm.

  “A city farm?”

  “No, they’re not pigs. They’re humans.”

  Snowflake shook his head. His mane waved in the air. “Is this something to do with K-Pax?” he said.

  “Yes!” said Malcolm.

  “OK,” said Snowflake. “Hold on!”

  Malcolm nodded, although he wasn’t sure what to hold on to. And also, because he didn’t have any fingers, how. All this came into his mind with a rush as Snowflake’s long muzzle burrowed underneath him, and lifted him high into the air.

  “OK,” said Snowflake, “now stop holding on!”

  “I’m not holding on! And I don’t know how or what to hold on to anywaaaaaaaaarrggggghhh …!!”

  He said this as Snowflake threw his (Snowflake’s, that is) head high in the air, causing his (Malcolm’s, that is) body to slide down his long neck, eventually ending up – with a backwards head-over-heels36 tumble – sitting, with his tiny legs astride the huge horse’s body, in the saddle.37

  “Right!” said Snowflake. “Now hold on again.”

  “No, but hold on to what? And with whaaaaaaa aarrggggghhh …!!” screamed Malcolm, as Snowflake reared up in the air, bolted to the edge of the field, jumped over the fence, and started off at a canter on the path out of the farm.

  As dusk fell on Orwell Farm, Mr Barrington was in the living room looking out of the window. Animals, he thought: what an easy life they have. Eat and sleep and sleep and eat.

  OK, sometimes it was eat and sleep and get eaten. But the ones that were kept for milk or wool, or to show to children, like most of the ones on Orwell Farm … Mr Barrington couldn’t help envying them a little. Being a human – certainly being a grown-up (a very grown-up: Mr Barrington wasn’t seeing fifty-nine again), in charge of a large group of Year Six children, was such hard work sometimes.

  It had been a long day: the children had been pretty rowdy since the sheep-shearing. Particularly the boys who’d chased the sheep back to their field. They had hardly calmed down since.

  Still: they were brushing their teeth now, and getting into their pyjamas. Mr Barrington was looking forward to them all being in bed. Then maybe he could settle down on the sofa with a Sudoku puzzle and a tiny drop of whisky from the flask he had brought with him.

  Suddenly, his mobile phone went.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Mr Barrington. It’s Malcolm Bailey’s father. Stewart.”

  “Oh yes, hello.”

  “Is Malcolm there?”

  “Er … Malcolm. Yes. I’m sure he is. They’re upstairs, I’ll just go and—”

  “Mr Barrington! Mr Barrington!” He looked up from the phone. Two of the pupils were running into the living room, waving their hands frantically. Mr Barrington squinted at them. They were wearing identical pyjamas. They looked like the same person. But that couldn’t be right. He would have to go to his optician again.

  “Sorry, I’m on the phone, er …”

  “Ellie. It’s Ellie.”

  “And I’m her twin brother, Fred!”

  “Oh yes. Yes. Anyway …”

  “But … look, Mr Barrington! Out there!”

  Mr Barrington looked out of the window again. All he could see was what he’d seen before: the field outside the farmhouse; the gathering dusk; the trees in the distance; and …

  “What’s that?”

  “Yes!”

  “That white blur! What is it?”

  “It’s a horse, Mr Barrington. A white horse! Being ridden by a tiny piglet!”

  Mr Barrington frowned and leant closer to the window.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes!”

  “So what’s that behind it?”

  “It’s a whole group of animals chasing the horse!” said Fred.

  “Wh
ich animals?” said Mr Barrington.

  “A dog, a cat …”

  “Three sheep …”

  “Oh, look, two other bigger pigs …”

  “And what’s that? In the distance …?”

  “Is it … two tortoises?”

  “Impossible to tell from here.”

  “Can you see, Mr Barrington?”

  “No. No, I can’t see. Not in this light, you know. Anyway … Have either of you seen Malcolm?”

  Ellie shook her head. “Actually no, I haven’t seen him for a little while.”

  “Last time I saw him was yesterday just before tea, out near the goat pen,” said Fred.

  Mr Barrington picked up the phone again. “Sorry, Mr Bailey … Hello?”

  All he could hear at the other end was:

  “BRRRR! HAHAHHA!! HAHAHAHA!! BRRRR!! HAAAHHHAA!”

  “Mr Bailey?” said Mr Barrington. “Do you want to speak to Malcolm?”

  “No, it’s OK … BRRR! HAHAHA!” said Stewart. “You’re all clearly having a fabulous time! I don’t want to interrupt all your crazy storytelling! Making up all sorts of goings-on at that farm! A piglet riding a horse!”

  In the background, Mr Barrington heard someone say: “LOLT2000!”

  “BRR! HAAA! Brilliant!”

  “Well …” said Mr Barrington, who frankly remained unsure whether Fred and Ellie had been making it up or not, and therefore could not think of what to say except, “Well …” And then: “Thank you.”

  Mr Barrington hung up the phone. I’m getting too old for this, he thought.

  “How’s it going?” shouted Snowflake, above the loud clippety-clop coming from the tarmac. Malcolm sat up. They’d been going for hours, down country lanes and then bigger roads and now this suburban street, and he was more confident with his riding now. He had found that if he pushed his front hooves along the back of the horse’s neck, the little gap in them acted like fingers round Snowflake’s luxurious mane. He looked around.

  They were riding through streets lit by lamp-posts and the odd light shining from bedroom windows of houses they passed. Behind him, he could see Trotsky, Zsa-Zsa, Mabel, Ludwig and the Dollys doing their best to keep up. It was a warm night, and Malcolm could feel the breeze on his snout and twitching ears.