Chapter Seven
In which I attempt to pull the wool over Man’s eyes and Man’s heroics go unappreciated
I awoke the next morning to find Man gone. He hadn’t gone far; the shadow cast by the rising sun revealed he had climbed to the roof of the house (as opposed to the roof of the shed where we had taken to spending our nights) and he was watching daylight dawn on Edgar Street and the town beyond. His stance was not that of the chest-beating alpha male gorilla. Neither did he look likely to throw back his head and bellow his distinctive cry. Rather it appeared to me he was tasting the air, inhaling lungfuls of it through those perfect commas, his nostrils.
The Dedley air is different from the aromatic atmosphere to which we were accustomed in the jungle, where everything smells of life and death, and I think of all of us, Man was finding it most difficult to acclimatise. I am no expert in traffic emissions - even at this early hour the rumble of motor vehicles was discernible, like a distant stampede - but I worried that drinking in so much of the town air like that could not be beneficial to anyone, let alone someone with Man’s enhanced lung capacity. Why, he can project his voice across miles of open plain and hold his breath underwater long enough to defeat an entire bask of crocodiles.
A second later, having seen me rise from slumber, he was with me on ground level with the gleam of enthusiasm smouldering in his eye.
“Lady!” he laughed and made a vague gesture to the air and sky. “Animals! Man smell! Animals!”
A word about Man’s speaking patterns: I taught him English and, when Baby came along, I taught him too, but one should not deduce from the economy of Man’s speech that he is in any way deficient. He only says as many words as he needs to and yes, all right, the concept of personal pronouns may have failed to take root in the garden of his vocabulary, but he never has difficulty in making his meaning clear - unlike others more verbose than he, and I number myself among those obfuscating orators.
“What are you talking about, darling?” I snuck my arm around his narrow waist. “Of course there are animals. The people here keep house pets like cats and dogs and hamsters and horses and what-have-you.”
My answer fell short of satisfactory.
“No!” His golden tresses waved as he shook his golden head. “Big animals. Wild!” He pulled me towards the gate. “Man find animals.”
“What’s going on?” a bleary-eyed Baby called down from the shed. “What’s all this about animals?”
He performed a somersault in the air and landed beside his doting parents. Man tousled Baby’s hair.
“Son find animals,” he beamed.
I decided common sense and domesticity should prevail and I ushered my beautiful men towards the kitchen door. “Breakfast first, gentlemen.” I would brook no suggestion to the contrary. I poured a carton of milk into a bowl of cereal and then scooped it out by the dishful. While they drank and munched from the bowls, I stole out of the house to call upon our neighbours, the Lyonses.
It did not occur to me that they would still be sleeping at this hour. I was about to grab the brass lion by the ring and rouse the entire household when someone behind me spoke.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, My mom’s a bit of a dragon at the best of times. If she doesn’t get her eight hours, well... ”
It was the elder Lyons girl. Alison. I looked from her to the closed door and back again, trying to work out how she had got out of the house and behind me undetected.
“I’m just getting in,” she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I can’t bloody well sneak in if you’re going to bash the door down.”
I understood. We used to do a lot of sneaking around after curfew at school. Oh, the larks we had!
I took Alison by the arm and led her away from the house. “I shan’t breathe a word,” I assured her, “but might I ask you something?”
“Um... I suppose.”
“My husband has got wind of some animals in the vicinity. Could you perhaps shed some light?”
“Animals?” she frowned. “Oh, yes! You want the zoo. About half a mile away.”
The word cut me like a dagger made of ice.
“You can’t miss it,” she continued, gesturing along Edgar Street. “Turn left and straight on.”
“Oh, no, my dear!” I was beginning to panic. “Not a zoo, oh no! My husband wouldn’t care for it -”
I was already having visions of him setting free the animals and incarcerating the keepers.
The girl didn’t seem to understand.
“I cannot tell my husband there is a zoo nearby. It would upset him deeply. It would break his heart.”
“Nature reserve,” her face lit up.
I begged her pardon.
“Nature reserve,” she said again as if repetition would make her meaning apparent. I told her it was of no consequence what the place was called, the principle was the same. She shook her head.
“No, listen. A couple of miles away there’s a little nature reserve. Sort of a farm, really.”
“And what of it?”
“You’re worried, right, that the zoo is really going to upset your old man, right?”
“Old man?”
“Well, my way of thinking is a little zoo would only upset him a little bit. Do you follow?”
I chewed my lower lip. It’s a good way to keep its rich, red colour.
“The lesser of two evils...” I mulled it over. “Thank you.”
I wandered back to my garden. Alison, unbidden, came with me.
“I’ll take you there, if you like,” she said. “Give us a chance to have a shower. It’s all right; I’ve passed my test.”
She skipped away and I wondered why one would need to pass a test in order to shower.
I joined my family in the kitchen. Uncle Mjomba was peeling a banana with his feet. Man and Baby looked at me, their faces masks of expectation.
“I know where the animals are,” I announced. Man and Baby cheered with delight but the implacable grimace of Mjomba’s carved countenance increased my sensation of unease.
***
Uncle Mjomba elected to stay behind and occupy himself with the indoor watering hole. I told myself I was probably imagining any admonition that may have been behind his desire to remain at home. The rest of us (Man, Baby and I) crammed into Alison’s tiny car - a Mini, I believe it is called. The girl seemed inordinately keen to assist us and I suspect her kindness was born of her reluctance to face the anger of her mother when it became known she had stayed out all night.
She explained that she was a new driver, having gained her licence only a fortnight before we arrived. I had to try to explain that in this country people often require a special piece of paper that bestowed permission to do certain things. Baby was astonished that something so flimsy and vulnerable could contain such power.
“Mrs Lyons have licence for daughters?” said Man with a wry smile.
“Well, no!” said Alison. “You don’t need a licence to have kids -”
“Children important.”
“Well, yes, but you don’t need permission. You can just go ahead.”
Man gave a bemused grunt. I could see him adding to his mental list of Reasons To Dislike Our New Home.
To my surprise, the Mini did not move very fast at all. That was because none of the other cars were moving at speed either.
“Rush hour,” said Alison but that explained nothing.
“When?” said Man from the back seat. He was folded up on himself so that his square chin was between his knees.
“It’s wonderful!” Baby gasped, wriggling in his seat beside his father, trying to see through all of the car’s windows at once.
“Crippled hippopotamus faster.” Man strained against his seat belt or rather, the seat belt s
trained against him. One flex of those pecs and it would snap like a rotten liana. “Man walk.”
He jiggled the door controls to no avail.
“Child-proof lock,” said Alison. “He won’t get out.”
She turned a corner and suddenly we were out of the main flow of traffic and able to pick up a bit of speed. Baby - clever boy! - found a button that operated the window at his side. He made the glass slide up and down a few times before thrusting his head out into the open air.
“Yippee!” he cheered and his breath was snatched away by the air. “Try it, Dad!”
Man, never slow to cotton on, found the corresponding button on his door. A little cautious at first, he poked his head through the open window.
“Like dogs!” Our driver was clearly amused. “Are you going to join in, your ladyship?”
“Oh, no, dear,” I dismissed the notion at once. “One has to think of one’s hair.”
Ms Lyons appeared to approve of my answer. “You have great hair,” she conceded. “What do you use on it?”
“Use?” The question threw me. “Oh, just wind and rain.”
“Wind and Rain,” she repeated carefully as though committing them to memory. “I’ll look out for that in Boots. What colour’s the bottle?”
I laughed at the very idea. “My dear girl, wind and rain don’t come in bottles or boots. One would think, being English, you would know all about the weather.”
“Oh,” she said.
She took the next corner a little too sharply and rode us over some bumps in the road a little too quickly for comfort. Man and Baby found delight in every jolt and swerve, and I had to remind myself she was quite new to this driving business and hoped she would not cite me as a referee should she apply for a position as a professional chauffeuse - What was his name, the fellow who used to ferry my father hither and yon in the Rolls? Jenks? Jinks? Jakes? Something of that nature. Peculiar fellow: eyes too close together and so forth, but that didn’t matter when the most one saw of him on a regular basis was the back of his neck and peaked cap.
I was jarred from this reminiscence by the realisation Ms Lyons was attempting to converse. Something about my outfit. I thanked her for her complimentary remarks and assured her the gazelle that had yielded its skin so that I might wear it had died of natural causes. (It is natural, of course, to die when one’s throat has been slit by a five-inch blade).
I felt she was on the verge of asking me about my shoes, or the total lack thereof - when we drove through an open gateway above which a sign declared it to be the car park for the Squirrel’s Nook Nature Reserve.
There was a good deal of greenery around in the form of grass and tall hedges behind wooden fences. Alison brought the car to a halt with a jerk that almost gave all four of us whiplash.
“Right,” she said. “We’re here.”
We sat in the car somewhat at a loss. With an eye roll that made her look too much like her mother, Alison got out. She walked around the car and opened my door for me and then repeated this service for Man and Baby. I, of course, had never opened a car door for myself in my life, accustomed as I was to Jakes and his chauffeuring, and Man and Baby had barely even touched cars at all. They have both jumped in and out of open-topped jeeps hurtling along at full speed, getting into or out of some scrape or other but I doubt very much that the prevailing weather and traffic conditions in Dedley allow for much hurtling along in open-topped jeeps.
Alison led us like a mallard with a line of ducklings towards the main entrance. I attempted to distract Man and Baby with small talk about Mjomba and the bathroom. I didn’t want to linger long enough for them to read any signage. Yes, they can both read. Baby is proficient in several languages, whereas Man’s reading is mainly the spoor of whatever creature he is tracking or the reading of people’s characters within a few seconds of meeting them, but he can sound out words when the need arises.
“Nature reserve.” Baby’s quick eyes had seen the lettering underneath a cut-out of a cheerful squirrel. “What’s a nature reserve, Mother?”
“Oh, darling,” I ruffled his hair to annoy and distract him. “It’s a euphemism. These days, the word ‘zoo’ is taboo.”
“Taboo?” said Man. “Zoo bad juju.”
“Quite possibly, darling. But let’s remain open-minded, shall we?”
I passed my gold card up the line to Alison who handed it to a bespectacled elder behind a counter. I was called upon to approach and append my signature to some kind of electronic device with an inkless stylus. I found this an awkward procedure. There was barely enough space to write my name, let alone add ‘with love and best wishes’.
“Pay?” said Man with loud indignation. “Pay see animals? Jungle animals free. Animals free in all ways.”
Oh dear, I thought, it’s all going belly-up already. I suggested that perhaps we ought to return to the house.
“No way,” said Man. “See animals. Put mind at rest.”
Or indeed the opposite, I thought but didn’t say.
The elder handed us our tickets, eyeing up my husband rather lasciviously. “He’s a bit of all right,” she cackled.
“Only down the one side,” I pointed out. I bundled him and Baby away from her as quick as I could. We went out through a different door and found ourselves outside in an enclosure divided into pens and paddocks. There was a kind of tranquillity to the place and the fresh aromas of life itself - one would scarcely believe that beyond the trees the hustle and bustle of Dedley continued. The reserve was an oasis of calm.
Man stood still - apart from the flaring of his nostrils as he sampled the air.
“Something wrong, darling?” I had to ask, fearing the jig was already up.
“Hmm,” said Man. “Man open-minded.”
Alison showed us around. We moved from pen to pen, looking at goats and pigs and badgers. The animals either ignored us or returned our scrutiny with blank, lifeless stares.
“Man communicate,” my husband nudged me. “Cheer animal up.”
He cupped his hands around his mouth and was about to utter his characteristic clarion call when a member of staff, dressed all in khaki, approached.
“Here,” she said, all freckles and smiles. She held out a fluffy creature, which Baby recognised right away as a bunny rabbit. I had told him about them, of course, in many a bedtime story, but now here he was, seeing one in real life: an actual bunny rabbit, no longer just an exotic creature from the storybooks.
Baby held out his hands, excited, and the girl passed the buck.
“So sweet!” Baby cooed into the rabbit’s twitching face. He petted and stroked the cute little thing before offering it to Man for a closer look.
In my husband’s large hands, the creature was dwarfed. Man inspected it from every angle and gave it a tentative sniff. Then he passed it quickly to me.
In a leap and a bound and a cartwheel, Man was across the enclosure, over a fence and into a paddock where, in the midst of a group of schoolchildren, a man, also in khaki, was giving a talk.
There was a snake draped across his shoulders.
“Keep still,” Man advised. “Not move muscle.”
The semi-circle of schoolchildren on the ground held its collective breath. They must have known they were in mortal danger and the man who had been addressing them was most certainly a goner. They were reckoning without my husband.
Man’s arms darted, like striking cobras themselves, and snatched the snake from the hapless man’s neck. The children gasped. Man swung the snake by the tail, describing circles over his head and then dashed the creature’s brains to the ground. The children’s gasps turned to screams - of relief, probably.
“Give me that snake!” the would-have-been victim demanded in what came across as an ungrateful tone. Man obligingly handed over the now lifeless and no lo
nger deadly assailant. Downcast, the man in khaki trudged away, holding the thing that, were it not for my husband’s intervention, would have put him in the hospital or mortuary.
“Beast!” snapped a woman, trying to shepherd weeping children away from the area.
“Beast dead,” said Man. My husband never expects thanks for his rescues but that does not mean he should not be given any. I joined him, slipping a proprietorial arm around his waist. I pecked his neck.
“Bravo, darling; well done! Everyone is just in shock, I expect.”
I took him by the hand and we found Baby and Alison looking at an injured fox, lying glumly in a kennel.
“Shall we set it free, Dad?” Baby’s eyes were wet and shining and immediately so were mine. “It looks so unhappy.”
Man looked ready to vault into the fox’s pen when Alison gave a cry of alarm.
“You can’t do that!”
“Easy,” said Man, one leg over the fence.
“No, I mean it’s not allowed!” Alison’s eyes flickered in all directions and her voice was constricted with panic.
“Animal free not prisoner,” said Man.
Alison sent me an appeal for help but I was dumbfounded.
“It’s not a prisoner,” she reached up and pulled Man’s forearm. “It’s a patient.”
“Not have to wait longer.”
“No! It must have been injured and brought here to get better. Treatment. You know, like a hospital?”
Man, straddling the fence, blinked. “And when fox better?”
“Then they’ll set him free. I expect. Probably. I don’t know. You’ll have to ask them.”
From his vantage point, Man said he could see ‘them’ coming. Sure enough, we were joined by the elder from the reception, the man whose life my husband saved from a deadly snake and also the policemen we had encountered in the supermarket, those same officers who had enjoyed slipping and sliding in my muddy trench the afternoon before.
“That’s him, officer,” said the man in khaki.
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