AniMalcolm

by David Baddiel

  “Chinny!” whispered Malcolm, his voice cracked. “Chinny! Can you hear me?”

  “Que?” said Chinny. “No estoy seguro de lo que está diciendo el señor de la paloma …?”

  Oh, for crying out loud, thought Malcolm, through the pain. Of course. He’s Argentinian.

  But: this close to his boyhood self, looking at his own posters and toys, he found that the memory was there, of bits and pieces of Spanish that he had learned at school.

  “Chinny … Chinny. Listen. Soy… Malcolm.”

  “Señor Malcolm? El niño? Que vive aqui?”

  “If that means ‘the boy who lives here’, yes … I mean, si… not another Malcolm …”

  “Por qué eres una paloma?”

  “It doesn’t matter why I’m a pigeon. I just am. But look. Firstly, I’m sorry. Lo siento …”

  “Por qué?” said Chinny.

  “For not being nice to you when mum and dad gave me you as a birthday present. For not accepting you. I don’t know how to say any of that in Spanish. I hope you understand.”

  Chinny looked at him. Then, slowly, nodded.

  “And secondly, I’m going to go to sleep now.” Malcolm’s exhausted mind struggled for the word. “Dormiré. But you have to stay there. While I go to sleep. Don’t go away. No … vaya. Can you do … that for me … please?” Malcolm’s tiny watchful pigeon eyes finally shut. But just before he actually lost consciousness he remembered one last bit of the chinchilla’s language.

  “Por favor,” he whispered.

  “Hello, Mr Barrington!” said Jackie.

  “Oh, hello, Mrs Stone!” said Mr Barrington. “Er … no, Mrs Stone is Fred and Ellie’s mum. That’s her over there,” said Jackie.

  “Where?”

  “Over there. With … the large – the well-proportioned – the bigger-than-average – you know – husband.”

  “Oh yes. Very good.”

  To be fair to Mr Barrington, it was quite hard to see who was who. The bus had only just stopped outside the school gates – with a huge creak of the handbrake – and every child in Year Six had piled out at once. Now all the parents were trying to pick up their child at the same time. And it was getting dark.

  “Um …” said Jackie, “where’s Malcolm?”

  “Malcolm! Yes!” said Mr Barrington, looking around. “He’s … where is he …? Ah, here!”

  “Hello!”

  “Er … hello, Morris,” said Jackie.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Mr Barrington.

  “That’s Morris. Morris Fawcett.”

  “Oh,” said Mr Barrington, looking at Morris. “Wait a minute. Didn’t I give you my phone? When …” He turned away from Morris, to Jackie, “…you called. To speak to your son? A couple of days ago?”

  “You said that was my mum,” said Morris.

  “Well. Yes. I did. But clearly it wasn’t. Couldn’t you tell?”

  “Naah.” Morris nodded towards Jackie, whose face had become very concerned. “She called me M …”

  “Right. Is that what your mum calls you as well?” said Mr Barrington.

  “No. But …” And here Morris frowned, as if a great and long thought was involved in what he was going to say next, “… she might do. Because my name. It begins …” His eyes went down and his lips moved, as if spelling it out in his head: then he looked up again, “… with M. Innit?”

  Morris smiled, pleased with himself. For a second, Mr Barrington smiled too, pleased that Morris had understood something.

  But it was literally for a second, before he went white with fear, on hearing Jackie scream:

  “Mr Barrington!! Where is MALCOLM!?”

  “No!” said Jackie, tearfully, driving back and speaking on her (hands-free) phone. “They don’t know!”

  “Well, how can that be?” said Stewart.

  “I don’t know!”

  “Well, look, darling, I’ve called the farm.”

  “And?”

  “And, er … well, they don’t know where he is either …”

  “Oh! Oh!” said Jackie.

  “But: the very nice man there said they think he must just have missed the bus, because he went out playing in the fields or something and forgot the time. They’re going to look for him now.”

  Jackie, by this time, had reached Kendal Road and was parking the car.

  “He offered me some free cheese too,” said Stewart. “Sounded quite nice.”

  “NEVER MIND FREE ********56 CHEESE,” said Jackie. “I think we should call the police!”

  “No … darling. Let’s just wait and see. They’ve said it’s happened before, a kid missing the bus.”

  “Well …” said Jackie, slamming the car door and opening the front gate, “OK. But if they get back to us and say they can’t find him, then I’m phoning 999 straight away, and – OOOOOOOHHH!!”

  “What is it?”

  “Come outside. Quickly!!”

  The whole family stood, silently, on the front garden path, looking up at Malcolm’s bedroom window, where, as far as they could see, Chinny the Chinchilla was unconscious on a ledge.

  “How did he get out?” said Stewart. “Do you think it was the cats?”

  “Might have been,” said Grandpa. “They might have dragged him out through the bars of his cage. Like in the war.”

  “Dad,” said Stewart, “can you shut up about the war. You weren’t even alive during it.”

  “Fair enough,” said Grandpa.

  “He wasn’t in his cage,” said Libby. “Last thing I saw he was running around the room …”

  “Well,” said Stewart, going into the house, “I’ll go and get him off the window ledge …”

  “This is terrible,” said Jackie.

  “Can I …?”

  “No, Bert, you can’t!” Jackie paused, and looked down. “It’s terrible because … it’s an omen,” she said, saying the word ‘omen’ very ominously. “Don’t you see? Chinny was Malcolm’s pet. And now …” she began to cry, “Malcolm’s gone missing!!”

  “Jackie,” said Grandpa, “we don’t know if he’s gone missing …”

  “If the chinchilla’s dead, then it might mean that Malcolm is … that Malcolm is—”

  She was interrupted by the loud sound, from above, of Stewart’s voice.

  “Hold on a minute!” he shouted.

  They all looked up. Stewart had opened the window, and was bending over the chinchilla.

  “He’s not dead. I can see him breathing. Very, very faintly.”

  The rest of the family, still standing in the front garden, took this in. Jackie nodded. Her face acquired a determined look.

  “Right,” she said. “Libby! Get a box!”

  “Where are we going?” said Libby.

  “To the vet’s!”

  “But it’s Sunday!” said Stewart.

  “I’m the receptionist. I’ve got the keys, and Rodney’s home number. He owes me for working there for a pittance for twenty years!”

  And with that, she headed back towards the car.

  Once they were all in the car, and on the way to the vet’s – with the unconscious chinchilla in a box on Bert’s knees – the Bailey family were very focused. They were going to save the chinchilla.

  It was probably good they were so focused, because that mission might have got confused – they might even have turned the car round, and stopped it – if they’d noticed, staring out of Malcolm’s bedroom window, watching them leave, another, very similar-looking Andean Lanigera Chinchilla.

  The Baileys had been sitting in the waiting room at Braden’s Veterinary Surgery for nearly three hours. The clock on the wall said 10.45pm.

  Jackie was resting on her husband’s shoulder.

  “I really think,” whispered Stewart, “that you should go home.”

  “Who’s you?” said Jackie, waking.

  “All of you,” he said, looking round. Grandpa and Libby and Bert were all there as well, sleeping on chairs, underneath pictures of c
ats and dogs and hamsters.

  “I think they want to be here,” she said.

  Stewart looked to the door at the end of the room, the door where the surgery was.

  “How long did Rodney say he thought it would take?”

  Jackie shrugged. “He wasn’t sure. The injuries are bad. And Chinny’s a very small creature.”

  “I know.”

  “He said he would do his best.”

  “Yes,” said Stewart. “And if there’s one thing we know about Rodney, it’s that he likes a chance to show off what a great vet he is …”

  Jackie nodded. She took her phone out of her coat and peered at the screen. There were no messages on it. “Have you heard anything from the farm?” she said.

  “Yes. I just got a text.”

  She sat up, turning to him. “And …?”

  “They’ve called off the search. For tonight.”

  Jackie stood up, her teeth clenched. “Right. Time to call the police.”

  Stewart looked very worried. He glanced around, making sure the other members of the family were asleep.

  “Jackie,” he whispered. “I already have called the police.”

  Jackie went white. “You have? What did they say?”

  “They said normally they don’t put any kind of police search in place until someone has been missing for seventy-two hours.”

  “Three days!”

  “Yes. They said a lot of boys of Malcolm’s age run away for a bit, and then just turn up.”

  Jackie took a deep breath. She picked up her coat. “Let’s go to the farm! I want to check myself!”

  “No, darling …”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he might be making his way back somehow. Hitch-hiking. Or on a bus or a train. And so it’s better for us to be here for him – what if we find out he’s made it to the city, but then we’re miles away in the country …?”

  Jackie shook her head, defeated. She folded her coat and sat back down next to her husband.

  “They—” he said.

  “The police?”

  “Yes … they said to get back to them tomorrow if there was no news.”

  Jackie shut her eyes “I feel so awful, Stewart …”

  “I know, darling,” he replied.

  “No, I don’t just mean because I’m so worried. Also because … almost the last thing that happened with Malcolm before he went off on that trip was … us all laughing at him … because of the Monkey Moment …”

  Stewart frowned. “Jackie,” he said, “you mustn’t …”

  “I can’t bear it. I can’t bear that he’s out there somewhere and his last memory of us is that. Especially me. I’m his mum.” Softly, she started to cry. “I shouldn’t have laughed …”

  “Jackie,” said Stewart, putting his arm round her, and folding her crying face into his chest, “Malcolm’s going to be OK. I know he is.”

  He said it very confidently. But his face didn’t quite go with his words.

  Next thing she knew, Jackie Bailey was having a dream. It was a dream in which there were lots of animals and lots of children, some of which were her children and some of which weren’t, and the children and the animals kept on getting mixed up, and the children were chasing the animals, but then the animals were chasing the children, and all she could hear was quacking and mooing and barking and meowing and …

  … then she woke up and realised that Bert was not sleeping any more. He had got hold of Stewart’s phone and was pressing all the icons on AnimalSFX over and over again.

  “Bert …” she said, sleepily, “can you stop that, please.”

  But before Bert did stop it, Rodney Braden came out of the surgery.

  “Hello, Jackie,” he said, quietly.

  “Oh, Mr B,” said Jackie. “Sorry, I must have fallen asleep. What time is it?”

  Mr Braden looked up at the clock.

  “Just turned five am.”

  “Oh, thank you so much for working this late. It’s so good of you.”

  “It is good of me, yes.”

  “So …?” said Jackie, after an awkward pause. “How is he?”

  As Jackie said this – slightly louder and more insistently than perhaps she meant to – all the others began to stir.

  “Well,” said Rodney, smiling – his special ‘what-a-great-vet-I-am’ smile – “perhaps you all should come and see.”

  He took the Bailey family over to the surgery.

  “OK. Here we go.”

  And he began to open the door.

  On the other side of the door, lying on a tiny operating table, the chinchilla’s eyes began to open. This awakening wasn’t quite like all the others in this story, though. He’d been under an anaesthetic, which had put him really fast asleep. So as he came round he was a little confused.

  Images went through his mind. Of many different animals, and of many different places. But one thing kept coming back to him. It was quite hard for his waking mind to place it – but it seemed to be a goat. And the goat seemed to be saying something about how … about how he had to make sure that he ended up next to an animal he really loved, and who loved him. That this was how he would become what he was meant to be.

  Then, suddenly, he heard a noise.

  COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

  And then again.

  COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!

  The chinchilla felt frightened. He looked up. He seemed to be in an operating theatre … so why … was he hearing a cockerel?

  Then he thought of something, with horror:

  The third crow of the cockerel.

  Time had run out. This was it. He was going to be – forever – whatever animal he saw next.

  But then, even through his fear, something struck him. That crow didn’t sound like any cockerel had sounded in the last few days. In the last few days, when he had been an animal, he had understood the crow; he knew the cockerel had actually been telling the other animals to wake up.

  Cock-a-doodle-doo was just how humans heard it. Which must mean …

  He looked round as the door opened. It all seemed to be happening in slow motion.

  Then he heard a human voice – a woman’s – say: “Bert! Can you stop doing that?”

  “But I’ve never pressed that one before. The big chicken with the silly rubber glove on his head!”

  “Yes, I know, Bert. But not now.”

  And then he saw that coming through the door was an animal he really liked; a number of animals he really liked; loved in fact; and who loved him.

  Just as K-Pax had told him he had to find.

  It was his family. Because humans, of course, are animals. We are just apes, who walk upright, wear clothes, and don’t throw poo around quite as much.

  “Now,” said Rodney, blocking the family from coming in straight away, “I should warn you. This was a very complicated operation. It stretched me to the fullest. I had to use all my surgical talents …”

  “Yes, we get that,” said Stewart, trying to squeeze past him. But Rodney wasn’t having it.

  “He’ll make a full recovery, but he’ll be groggy for a while. Might not seem quite like his old self, at least to begin with.”

  “No, we understand that,” said Grandpa, also trying to get past him.

  “I just want you to be prepared for every eventuality.”

  “We are prepared, Rodney!!” said Jackie, with some edge in her voice.

  “OK,” said Rodney, stepping out of the way quickly – sounding a tiny bit frightened of Jackie – and letting them see the patient.

  Who was lying quite uncomfortably now, on the tiny operating table. He was lying quite uncomfortably because he was suddenly much too big for it.

  And it was true, the chinchilla did not look at all like his old self. Or rather, in a way, he did: he looked like who he actually was and always had been; an eleven-year-old boy, called Malcolm Bailey.

  Everyone– including Rodney– looked astonished.

  “Hello, Mum. Hello
, Dad,” said Malcolm, weakly.

  “Well,” said Rodney. “Even I wasn’t prepared for that eventuality.”

  Afret everyone had finished hugging Malcolm – and after everyone57 had finished kissing him – Stewart said:

  “What are you doing here? What happened?”

  Malcolm thought for a moment. Then he said:

  “I was on the school bus, Mum. When you came to pick me up.”

  “What?” said Jackie.

  “Yes! But I was hiding. I stayed on, behind one of the seats at the back.”

  “Why?”

  “For a joke. But it went on a bit too long, and I didn’t realise you’d gone away. And then when I came out, everyone had gone.”

  “Oh!”

  “So then I came home. I walked from school. But when I got back, you weren’t there. And I didn’t have a key.”

  “Oh, yes, Jackie, we rushed here, didn’t we! With Chinny! Of course!”

  “So I walked around for ages looking for you. And then eventually I saw our car here, parked round the back. So I came in through the rear door, and found myself in this room. And Chinny was on the table.”

  “Malcolm!” said Jackie. “You shouldn’t have done that! Stayed on the bus, I mean! I was calling you and calling you …!”

  “Yes. I’m really sorry …” he said. His mum shook her head, trying to stay cross. But then her face melted, and she rushed to hug him again.

  “Oh well! As long as you’re safe and sound,” she said.

  “Um …” said Rodney. “Where’s the chinchilla?”

  From under the table, Malcolm picked up a red box. It was the box they’d used to bring Chinny to the vet’s yesterday evening.

  “He’s in here,” said Malcolm. “I put him in.”

  “Right. Can I have a look at him?”

  “No,” said Malcolm, swerving the box away from him. “I want to take him straight home.”

  “Really, Malcolm,” said the vet. “I should check how he’s doing.”

  “He’s fine.”