“Sorry, darling,” I called back, “I got distracted thinking about body image.”
He was waiting at the foot of the stairs. As I walked down, I got a good look at him and he at me. He was squeezed into a business suit that was too tight across the chest and too short in the sleeve. The trousers hung loosely on his narrow hips, even with a belt buckled to its last hole. The collar of the shirt was pressing into his neck and the tie gave him the choked appearance of a rabbit in a snare - I remember the groundskeeper setting those horrid traps around the estate. Horrid man. Name of Pickles or Pickering or some such. Ugh.
“Lady beautiful,” Man said. “With or without clothes,” he added.
“Do you think so? Does it suit me, do you think?” It was a light cotton dress with a floral print. Rather pretty, I thought, although I was having trouble with the white court shoes. I tottered on the stairs and fell into my husband’s arms. Reaching out to catch me, he caused a tear across the back of his shirt and jacket.
“Oops!” I laughed, stroking his cleanly-shaved jaw. “Better not turn your back on anyone, darling.”
“Good policy,” he agreed and gave me a kiss.
We went into the kitchen for Uncle Mjomba’s appraisal. The old dear almost collapsed, doubled over with laughter - or what passes for laughter in his vocabulary of hoots and screeches. He dug his fingers into his eye slots to wipe away the tears beneath.
“Knock, knock,” said Mr Lyons at the doorway. “I’ve got the car out. Ready for the off.” His jaw dropped when he saw the state of us. “My word!” he gasped, and here I have expurgated his language. “You look pretty as a picture!”
“Lion Man kind,” said Man.
“I was talking to your wife, but yes. You both look like decent, upright members of society.”
“Just because we have clothes on?” I asked. “Seems rather silly.”
“Clothes maketh the man,” said Mr Lyons, quoting something or other. A cliché, if ever I heard one.
“Clothes make Man itch,” said Man.
We laughed. Mr Lyons pointed out it would be best if my husband didn’t scratch his crotch during the meeting.
Mjomba offered to make us more tea - he used his own blend of leaves and grasses from the garden - but I declined. My stomach was already doing acrobatics as it was. Man, however, accepted a tall glass of water and then, at Mjomba’s urging, another.
“Now, listen,” Mr Lyons continued as we walked to his car. “Don’t go expecting miracles. This is just a preliminary meeting. An opportunity for you to say your piece.”
Uncle Mjomba waved us off from the garden gate. This was progress for him. I don’t think he had been further than the back garden since we moved in.
“Man get Son back,” Man was adamant.
“In time,” said Mr Lyons, starting the engine.
“In time for what?” said Man.
Mr Lyons didn’t answer. He drove us to the town centre and a car park. A footbridge spanned the busy road ahead. Man was eager to climb it but I warned him not to rip any more holes in his suit.
“Maybe later, darling. You and Baby can go climbing together.”
We crossed the bridge, which turned out to be rather a dull business with a lack of crocodile-infested waters below and an absence of wobbling jeopardy beneath our feet. Life is less exciting in Dedley, I had come to realise, but at least here, if someone takes your children away, they are less likely to offer them up as a sacrifice to the volcano gods.
We made slow progress through a covered shopping area, mainly because our new and only shoes were pinching our unaccustomed feet like crabs. Mr Lyons said we should leave the talking to him but I dismissed that idea - What did he know of our Baby and our lives together? How could he possibly comprehend any of it?
Man squeezed my hand. I was becoming aerated and we had yet to reach the offices.
Our passage through the shopping centre and the high street of the town attracted some commentary and rude stares from some of the natives who, it appeared to me, were all large of belly and small of intellect. There seems to be a uniform among the majority of these people of peaked caps and baggy trousers - we used to call them tracksuits during sports meets at Finesse. As far as I could see, these people were uninvolved in any kind of athletic endeavour from one year to the next.
I was taking out my rotten mood on innocent people. I focussed my attention on the words of Mr Lyons as he coached us. “Smile,” he said. “Be polite. Keep your temper.”
I pointed out that all that was easy for him to say; he wasn’t missing any offspring. He conceded the point and announced that we had arrived.
The office in question was housed in a large, redbrick building with a flat roof. Limp flags were hanging over the main entrance, like the flayed skin of previous victims. I was not optimistic.
We waited in the cool cathedral of the reception area and I was reminded of times outside the Headmistress’s office long before Man, before any of this. Well, I hadn’t been intimidated then by that old cow and I most certainly was not going to be cowed by any jumped-up bureaucrat now. Plus, I had the additional bonus of Man at my side.
Janice Driscoll was summoned by the girl at the desk. She appeared moments later, greeting us with a professional smile. I returned her pleasantries with matching coldness. She ushered us to the lift in which she had descended. Man declined to enter so she directed him towards the stairs.
Oh dear, I thought I could see her counting one mark against already; we had yet to reach the venue never mind start the interview.
“Where’s my Baby?” I asked but she would not speak and did nothing but operate the buttons. We rose to the top floor, ascending just a little bit faster than my stomach. It had been many years since I had been in a lift and found it a little disconcerting and claustrophobic. I found myself gasping for open air and had to steady myself against Mr Lyons.
Miss Driscoll - for I noticed she wore no wedding ring - smirked at my discomfort and I saw her add another mark to her mental tally. How could we possibly look after a child if we can’t even manage a ride in an elevator?
The lift lurched to a standstill, a bell rang and the doors slid apart. Wobbling in my shoes, I leant on Mr Lyons’s arm. Man was already there - several flights of stairs pose no obstacle to him; he wasn’t even breathing heavily. He looked at Mr Lyons. He looked at me. He looked away.
“Come in, please.” Miss Driscoll opened a glass-panelled door and waved us into a room that was dominated by several tables pushed together to make a larger one. At one side sat a bearded fellow with an ear-ring and an open-necked shirt revealing a gold chain and some curls of chest hair.
“Hey,” he said as we came in.
Miss Driscoll sat beside him, nodding at us to sit opposite the pair of them.
“My colleague, Jamie Peters,” she said.
“Hey,” repeated Jamie Peters. “I’m the social worker assigned to your case.”
“Hey,” said Man. Beneath him, the plastic chair seemed like a child’s. He cast a broad shadow across the table.
“Where’s my Baby?” I asked the social worker, whose face looked kinder than his colleague’s.
“Note the persistent infantilisation,” Miss Driscoll whispered, not too quietly. Jamie Peters ignored her.
“Where is my son?” I rephrased my question for her benefit.
“He’ll be here in a minute.”
“I want to see him.”
“Mrs - uh - ‘your ladyship’” she rolled her eyes, “This is not about what you want but what is best for the child.”
“And what about what he wants?”
“Well,” said Jamie Peters. “We’ll take that on board, too, of course.”
“Within reason,” was Miss Driscoll’s proviso.
The door opened an
d a woman came in but she was rudely shoved out of the way by Baby, impatient to see us.
“Oh, Mother!” he cried. We hugged and it felt strange to hold his clothed body next to my clothed body. They had given him a T-shirt with a picture of a horse on it, some short trousers and a pair of training shoes. His hair had been tamed with something slick and his appearance had a recently-scrubbed glow.
Miss Driscoll cleared her throat. The woman who had brought Baby in waited at the door, as though guarding it would prevent us from escaping with him.
As if!
I’m sure it crossed Man’s mind: to overpower these people and flee with Baby on his shoulders. But he knew as well as I, that that would not be the end of it. You can’t just escape one scrape and run off into your next adventure here. In the jungle we could lose our enemies in the trees, and put miles between us and them and we would never be found. You can’t do that in Dedley. They would come after us, and in our semi-detached nest we would be sitting ducks. And they would take our son away from us forever.
“Let’s make a start,” said Miss Driscoll, opening a file and clicking a pen.
“Okey-cokey,” said Jamie Peters. I saw Miss Driscoll steel herself and I felt heartened; in this Jamie Peters we might find an ally.
“The child known as Son, Sonny or,” she shuddered, “- Baby has been brought to our attention as being at potential risk from you, his guardians.”
Man’s eyebrow went up. He had spotted the ‘potential’ in her opening statement just as I had.
“Oh, Mother,” Baby interrupted, “I spent the night in a bed. In a children’s home. It was awful, Mother. The animals in the zoo have a better time of it, I’m sure.”
I patted his shoulder. “Try not to interrupt, darling. Remember the manners we taught you.”
Well, I would have been a fool not to say it.
“Sorry, Mother. Sorry, Miss Driscoll.” Baby looked suitably contrite.
“Good boy,” I smiled.
This little display cut no ice with Miss Driscoll. She continued with her opening remarks. She said she had visited the child in his home where she found a lack of furniture, a lack of clothes among other members of the household, and what appeared to be an ape in the kitchen for which she doubted we had a licence.
She asked at what school is the boy enrolled.
“School of life,” said Man.
“My son has always been home-schooled,” I placed a hand on my husband’s sleeve - how peculiar a sensation that was! To feel the warmth of his skin through the filter of cloth! “He can read and write in several languages, both European and African. He can fend for himself in the wild and can run, climb and swim with aptitude and proficiency.”
Jamie Peters made a few scribbled notes. Mrs Driscoll did not.
“Anyone can see,” she conceded, “that the child is articulate and well-mannered, but that is not the point. Neither is he physically underdeveloped or malnourished, it would appear. The question is: who are you to be looking after him? If he is not your biological child, then you have no right to him whatsoever.”
I lowered my voice. “His real parents are dead. The aeroplane crash. We saved Baby from the hyenas.”
“So you say. I don’t suppose you have any documentation to identify who those poor unfortunates were.”
“Your supposition is correct. Everything was burned up or lost.”
“Convenient,” Miss Driscoll muttered. Jamie Peters was sucking the end of his pencil and looking at us with wonder in his eyes.
“I’d like to hear about that,” he said, with a smile.
“Are you a pirate?” said Baby, nodding at the ear-ring.
“No, I’m not a pirate,” the social worker laughed. “You know about pirates, do you, Sonny? Remarkable.”
“I read him Treasure Island,” I said. “And later, he read it for himself.”
“And how did you come by the book?” Miss Driscoll looked sceptical. “I thought you said everything was burned up or lost.”
“And so it was,” I agreed. “But when my own aeroplane crashed, I was more fortunate.”
“Excuse me; you were in an aeroplane crash?”
“Yes, it is how I came to live in the jungle.”
“Man find Lady,” my husband took my hand. “Best day Man’s life. And day Baby crash too.”
“Oh, darling,” I smiled.
“Fascinating,” said Jamie Peters. “And how did you come to be in the jungle, um, Man?”
Man shrugged. “Plane crash.”
“Brilliant!” said Jamie Peters with a laugh. Miss Driscoll was the opposite of amused.
“Actually, Man was too young to remember how he came to be in the jungle,” I pointed out. “He was discovered by a group of kindly primates who brought him up as one of their own. He grew up to be their king.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” she snapped. “If you’re not going to take this interview seriously... ”
Mr Lyons chose that moment to speak up. He withdrew some papers from his briefcase.
“What’s all this?” said Miss Driscoll.
“Madam,” said Mr Lyons, with professional aloofness, “these papers confirm the identity of my client here, who was missing presumed dead for over twenty years. Now that she is returned to civilisation, she is a very wealthy woman.”
“I have a gold card,” I added, proudly.
“These are the deeds to a ruby mine in Kenya, that belong to her by default as the last surviving member of her bloodline.”
“Really?” I gasped. I had no idea. I knew Daddy was rich but from what source I could not say.
“So there is no question that the funds are not there to give this boy a life most of us would envy, if in fact he hasn’t already had such a life.”
“And my seat?” I asked. “My ancestral seat?”
Mr Lyons shook his head. “Unfortunately, your ladyship, the house no longer stands. It fell into disrepair after you were lost. Your parents fell into decline. Taxes and duties have eaten up the entirety of your estate.”
“But I still have the ruby mine, yes?”
“Are we rich, Mother?”
“We always have been, darling.”
“So why the big move?” This was from Jamie Peters, chewing the end of his pen. “Why here? Why Dedley?”
I told him we had left the jungle because it was no longer the place it was. Poachers, warlords, droughts, deforestation, you name it, we faced it. And as for Dedley - well, it sort of jumped out at us when we looked at a map of England. It sort of attracted us to it.
Jamie Peters nodded. “All sorts of people flock here,” he said. “All sorts. But rich folk from the jungle - that’s a first.” He scribbled on his pad.
Miss Driscoll gave the deeds to our ruby mine a cursory glance. “Again, this is beside the point. You have no legal claim to the guardianship of this child. He must remain in care until his blood relatives can be traced.”
“Son already in care,” Man pointed out. “Man care. Lady care.”
Miss Driscoll made the mistake of giving my husband a patronising smile.
“You don’t understand,” she showed him her teeth, which were crooked and discoloured. I could have pointed out that the three of us have perfect teeth, thanks to our superior diet, but I thought it prudent not to. “This child is not yours.”
Man thumped the table. It rattled. Miss Driscoll didn’t flinch. Jamie Peters did.
“If you are going to be hot-headed, Mr, um, Man, you may as well leave right now.”
Man got to his feet. He wrinkled his nose.
“This stink,” he said.
“It’s the law!”
“Driscoll not understand. Stink. Place. Building on fire.”
“What?”
&nb
sp; Sure enough, a bell began to clang. The woman at the door found she couldn’t open it.
“It’s locked!” she cried, jiggling the handle and pulling. Man bounded across the room and confirmed her declaration.
“Bash it down, darling!” I believe it is important to support one’s husband in all ventures. Man shook his head.
“Smoke,” he said.
Miss Driscoll snatched up her telephone and summoned the fire brigade.
“Oh, goody!” said Baby. “Do you think they will let me ride in the fire engine, Mother? I may still call you Mother, mayn’t I, Mother?”
“Of course, darling.”
Man, meanwhile was opening a window. He thrust his head out. Miss Driscoll nudged him aside.
“Out of the way, oaf. Let’s get to the fire escape?”
“Fire not escape,” Man told her. “Fire get in not out.”
“The stairs,” she pulled a face as though she found my husband a tiresome idiot.
“Stairs burn,” said Man. The rest of us rushed to the window. Sure enough, the fire escape was in flames.
“We’re trapped!” quailed Jamie Peters, becoming quite hysterical. I slapped him across the face. The force of the blow sat him on a chair. He rubbed his cheek and said thank you.
“Assaulting a social worker,” muttered Miss Driscoll.
“I haven’t started yet,” I shot back. “Now keep out of the way and let my husband save your miserable life.”
“Well, really!” Miss Driscoll folded her arms. But she stepped back and into a corner where she continued to make notes on a pad.
Man grabbed the jug of water and took it to the door.
“I hardly think that’s going to be enough to douse the flames,” Miss Driscoll sneered. Man shook his head.
“Man just need kick-start,” he said. He raised the jug to his lips and guzzled its contents in one go. He handed me the empty jug and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I knew what he was going to do. He had done this trick before when the Scorpion Folk had tried to smoke us out of our tree house.
“Think, darling!” I urged. “Fountains and waterfalls. The rainy season, darling! The lake. The watering hole. Uncle Mjomba with the garden hose!”
Jungle Out There Page 11