Jungle Out There

by William Stafford

  “I know you must be very busy,” she continued.

  “He is!” I snapped, wondering how I could get around the table and put my arms around my husband without seeming too obvious - oh, dash it all! What does that matter? I just went and did it.

  “Man free and easy,” my husband shrugged. He moved me aside and sat next to Jenny Porter. I cast about for a blunt instrument and tried to signal to Mjomba to hand me last night’s ladle from the draining board.

  “I’ll get to the point,” Jenny Porter adopted a more business-like posture. “After seeing you with the lions the other day, the way you controlled them -”

  Man held up a finger to interject. “Not control. Communicate.”

  “Well, whatever it was, it did the trick.”

  “Not trick. Communicate.”

  “Yes; the thing is, we’d like you to come back and try it again.”

  “Lion misbehave?”

  “No, no; it’s not the lions. It’s Sokwe.”

  Uncle Mjomba squeaked.

  “Sokwe...” said Man. “You call your gorilla ‘Gorilla’?”

  “Well, yes,” Jenny Porter’s cheeks flushed a little - but not too little for me to miss. “It’s no different from calling your uncle ‘Mjomba’. Uncle Uncle... Anyway we’re getting off the point. Sokwe has been acting strangely.”

  “Man fight Sokwe!”

  “No, no! God, no! Imagine the risk assessment form for that! No, what we’d like is for you to, ah, communicate with Sokwe, if you could. See what’s the matter with him.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” I asked.

  “Well, the veterinary department up at the zoo... ”

  “So, you mean you, then. You want my husband to go and talk to Gorilla the gorilla.”

  “That’s it exactly. Oh, please, Man. We’re - I’m at my wits’ end. Completely out of ideas.”

  She clutched his hand.

  Jenny Porter clutched my husband’s hand!

  Behind her, Uncle Mjomba shook his head. I sprang to the door. “Awfully sorry,” I smiled thinly. “He can’t. It’s impossible. We are going shopping, you see; it’s all arranged. Our lift will be here any minute. Won’t it, Baby?”

  “Um... I want to go to the zoo,” said Baby, like a traitor. Can you see what this Jenny Porter woman is doing to my family?

  “Man go zoo. See Sokwe. Nice chat. Son go shop.”

  “But I’d rather go with you!”

  “Lady need take Son feet for sandals. Son go nowhere without feet.”

  It was impossible to argue with reasoning of that calibre and unwise in the utmost to try. Baby’s shoulder slumped in tandem with his mood.

  Inspiration hit me like a lightning bolt. “Take Mjomba!” With Uncle Mjomba there to keep an eye, Jenny Porter would have to behave herself.

  “He’d be very welcome,” she said - as if to throw me off the scent, I’ll be bound.

  Uncle Mjomba is a law unto himself. He blew a resounding raspberry - it’s what we were all thinking (Well, perhaps just me) - and we caught a glimpse of pink as his tongue poked through the mouth slot of his mask. With that, he tore out into the garden.

  “Mjomba fear zoo keep Mjomba,” said Man.

  “Knock, knock,” said Jamie Peters at the back door. “Is everything all right with Mjomba? He nearly bowled me over.”

  “He’ll be fine,” I said pointedly.

  “Jamie Peters, Jenny Porter,” Man did the introductions.

  “Both J.P.s!” said Baby. I didn’t congratulate him on this observation; he was still in my bad books for his earlier treachery.

  “Right!” Jamie Peters rubbed his hands together. “Ready for the off?”

  “Um...” I dithered. “I don’t know, Jamie Peters. Perhaps we’ll go to the zoo instead.”

  “But I thought you wanted Sonny to get some sandals?”

  “I did - I do! It’s just that there has arisen something of a gorilla emergency.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say it was an emergency,” said Jenny Porter unhelpfully. “There’s no need for the rest of you to change your plans.”

  “And...” said Jamie Peters, “they might have sold out. Best to snap them up as soon as possible.”

  “I know!” Baby snatched up the screen thing I bought for him. “I can buy footwear on this thing with Mother’s gold card.”

  “You could...” Jamie Peters conceded, “but it’s always better to try them on before you buy. Besides, I’ve booked time off especially to take you.”

  “Oh,” I said. It felt like everyone and everything was conspiring against me. The universe seemed hell-bent on having me go to the shop with Baby and Jamie Peters (and why was he so damnably keen? I asked myself) while my husband is enticed to the zoo on some cock-and-gorilla pretext. There is a lot of dark corners in that castle. I know; I’ve seen them.

  As usual, it was Man who made the decision.

  “Son go shop. Lady go shop. Mjomba stay home. Man see gorilla.”

  “But, darling -”

  He silenced me with a ‘Man has spoken’ look and left the room.

  “Lovely to see you all again,” said Jenny Porter, getting up. She fished her car keys from her pocket and WENT AFTER MY HUSBAND.

  A chill ran through me like an injection of ice but my face was burning hot with rage.

  Jamie Peters dangled his car keys in the air and jingled them. “Your ladyship, your carriage awaits.”

  “Oh, don’t be a damned fool!” I rounded on him. Jamie Peters looked like a booted hyena - by which I mean one that has been kicked rather than one that has already acquired its own damned footwear.

  I stormed out. In my wake, I heard Baby mutter to the social worker kind enough to give up his free time to help us, “She’s in a bad mood.”

  I almost tore a strip off the boy and demand to know what kind of mood he would be in were his husband to be so willingly at the beck and call of a pretty blonde woman, but I stopped myself. None of this was Baby’s fault.

  I fretted all the way to the shopping mall. Baby and Jamie Peters played some kind of game that involved spotting cars of particular colours or something; I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.

  Baby, of course, was awestruck when he saw the scale of the mall and the range of goods on offer within. He declared he would visit every shop and stall but Jamie Peters pointed out that would take a long time and it would be better to secure that pair of sandals first.

  “Jolly good,” said Baby. Eagerly, he sat on an upholstered bench in the shoe shop so that the assistant could measure his feet.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Man and that Jenny Porter woman. I pictured them hand in hand, skipping around Dedley Zoo, licking each other’s ice cream cornets - No; I adjusted the mental image: Man would shun any dairy produce, knowing what he knew about that horrible industry. He had conducted further research on his screen-tablet thingy and was more set against it than ever.

  No, he would not stoop to exploiting cattle but was he also above infidelity? The matter had never arisen until now and suddenly my heart was full of doubt. Man had encountered precious few human females in the jungle and had married the first he had come across (namely me). What if, my mind tortured me, now that he was in a country that was practically crawling with women, his head was turned and he realised in the shopping mall of life, there is an almost infinite selection from which to choose?

  “Y - your ladyship?” Jamie Peters was at my elbow. I realised I had drifted out of the shoe shop and was at a balcony, gazing blankly at the seething hordes of shoppers on the lower level, like so many siafu ants, each trying to carry more than their own body weight in consumer goods.

  “Your ladyship,” Jamie Peters repeated, clearing his throat.

  “What is it, Jamie Pete
rs? Do they not have Baby’s size in stock?”

  “That’s not it,” he could not look me in the eye. “It’s Sonny... ”

  “What about him?”

  The cold claw of fear gave my heart a squeeze.

  “He’s - he’s,” Jamie Peters struggled to say it, “- he’s disappeared!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  In which we learn what has happened to Baby

  Can you imagine the sheer unutterable horror of the next few hours? If you are a parent, perhaps you can.

  I darted into the shoe shop, calling for Baby by name and using the Call. The shop assistants tried to corral me and calm me down but nobody puts Baby’s mother in a corner. The manager offered to alert the mall’s security team, for which I managed in my desperation to thank her.

  “The police too!” I implored her. “Ask for Andy. Tell him to come at once.”

  I ran around the mall, every floor, searching faces, calling out for my son. Jamie Peters jogged behind me, struggling to keep up. I turned and grabbed him.

  “The roof! Which way to the roof?”

  “Er - up? He won’t be up there, your ladyship.”

  “Well, I know that, silly. I need to call my husband.”

  Jamie Peters reached into his pocket and took out his portable telephone. “You’ll probably get better reception up there.”

  “I don’t need the bloody phone,” I snapped. “Which way?”

  I spotted the stairway before he did. Minutes later I was out in stark sunshine, atop the tallest part of the complex. Far below, the windscreens of the cars glinted and winked like waves catching the light. I cupped my hands around my mouth, threw back my head and, using all the breath in my body, called for my husband in a long, piercing ululation that I hoped would travel the couple of miles between the shopping mall and the ruins of the castle on the hill.

  Jamie Peters joined me on the rooftop. When he got his breath back after what had been for him a taxing climb of the stairs, he held out his phone to me again.

  “Take it!” he barked and I wondered where his good manners, deference and above all his friendliness had gone. “Take it if you want to hear from your son again.”

  ***

  I tried to keep Jamie Peters talking, certain that my husband would join us at any moment. On the rooftop we would be easier to find than in the mall itself among the swarms of shoppers.

  “I don’t understand,” I told him truly. “What are you saying?”

  “Please try to remain calm, your ladyship.”

  “I am bloody calm!” I almost bit his head off. I took a deep breath. “Are you telling me someone has taken my son? Are you telling me that you are involved?”

  Jamie Peters smirked and it was all I could do to stop myself shoving him off the building.

  “How could you? We thought you were our friend! Or at the very least, our case worker.”

  “Ha!” he gave a bitter laugh. “Social workers take children from their parents all the time.”

  “Is that supposed to be funny? Where is my son, damn you? Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

  “Being a social worker doesn’t pay very much.”

  “Oh, is that all? How dare you? How dare you put my child at risk over something as paltry and inconsequential as money? I would have thought that was beneath you, Jamie Peters.”

  “Will you stop calling me by my full name? Don’t you know how annoying that is?”

  “As annoying as having one’s child snatched? Oh, Jamie. Jamie, Jamie. I would have given you money, had you but asked. Do you think I care about money?”

  Oh, where was my husband? Surely he could have made it across town by now! I gnawed at a cuticle in anxiety.

  Baby has been kidnapped before. Of course he has. All sorts of scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells come to the jungle and seize him for one reason or another. Baby might have stumbled across their slave trading operation, for example, or the kidnappers might be hoping to coerce Man into revealing the location of some diamond mine or mythical treasure. Of course, it invariably ends badly for these evil men. As outsiders, they cannot beat Man on his home turf.

  But here - here in Dedley, we are the outsiders. We are the ones at a disadvantage.

  “What happens next?”

  Jamie Peters took his time to answer. “We wait.”

  “For... ?”

  “A call. You will be given instructions.”

  “You shan’t get away with this. You do know that.”

  “We will if you want Sonny back alive and in one piece.”

  I have rarely felt such contempt for another human being - and I’ve encountered ruthless ivory poachers and Mrs Barbara Lyons.

  “Baby liked you! He looked up to you! He thought you were his friend.”

  Jamie Peters shrugged. “He is a good kid; I’ll give you that. Naive, though. Easily led.”

  “My husband will kill you.”

  “No, he won’t.”

  “You’ll be glad when he does. It will save you from what Uncle Mjomba would do to you.”

  “Nobody’s going to get hurt. Follow our instructions and Sonny will be restored to you and everybody’s happy.”

  “I despise you.”

  He pouted insolently. “I don’t give a stuff what you think.”

  His phone buzzed. He answered. “Good... No, no interference at this end. Rightio.”

  “Let me speak to Baby!” I tried to grab the phone but Jamie Peters pushed me away. He pocketed the device and I threw myself at him and clawed at his jacket. He tried to fight me off. I pushed him over and sat on his chest.

  “Lady?”

  Man was standing over us; I had not seen him approach. I realised how it must look and climbed off the social worker. I didn’t want Man to think that what’s good for the goose is perfectly acceptable for the gander.

  “He’s got Baby!” I gave Jamie Peters a kick. “Well, some beastly confederates of his have.”

  “Son kidnap again?”

  “Yes, darling.”

  Man leaned forwards and lifted Jamie Peters by the shirt front. “Got phone?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Make call.”

  “B- b-but that’s not how it works.”

  “Make. Call.”

  Jamie Peters took out the phone and pressed a button. We heard it connect. Man seized the phone and dropped Jamie Peters in one movement. He stood up straight and put the device to his cheek.

  “Man come,” he said.

  Then he crushed the phone with his bare hand.

  “Ha!” said Jamie Peters. “Now you’ll never hear from your son.”

  I gasped and bit my knuckle but my husband was not alarmed. He picked up Jamie Peters by the waistband of his trousers and marched to the edge of the roof. He held the social worker suspended in the air over a precipitous drop. Jamie Peters screamed.

  “Man strong. But Man arm get tired some time.”

  Jamie Peters’s limbs flailed wildly.

  “Jamie Peters keep still. Only waggle tongue.”

  “Move away from the edge!” a voice commanded behind us. The police had arrived. Among them was our friend Andy.

  “Your ladyship,” he came to my side. “It’s in your husband’s best interests to let us handle this.”

  “But he’s just about to talk!”

  “That’s not how we do things. Man. I’m telling you as a friend: back away from the edge - Oh, and bring the other chap with you.”

  Man let out a roar of frustration. He gave Jamie Peters one last shake. The treacherous swine yelped. Man took a step back and put Jamie Peters down. Jamie Peters rolled away from the edge, scrambled to his feet and practically ran into police custody.

 
“He’s a madman!” he whimpered. The police took him away.

  Andy clapped Man on the shoulder. “That was the right thing to do.”

  “What will happen now?”

  “We’ll question the suspect but if there is any information you can give, any ideas at all. Any known associates, for example?”

  “Only us,” said Man.

  “Come to think of it,” I came to think of it,” he did seem pretty keen to get Baby and me to the shoe shop today. And - and - yesterday I had the feeling we were being followed. Two men! I was sure of it! Two men were following me. I mentioned it to Jamie Peters and he poured cold water on it. Oh, how could we have been taken in? We trusted that wretch! We liked him!”

  Man’s arm snaked around me and he pecked the side of my head. “Man not give up.”

  Policeman Andy held up his hands. “Hold up! Leave this to the professionals. Can’t have you getting in more trouble, can we?”

  I asked him what in blue blazes he meant by that.

  Policeman Andy grimaced. “I was going to call around later - before all this happened.”

  “Go on.”

  “We’ve had word from the fire investigation team. The fire at the social services building was started deliberately. That office was targeted on purpose.”

  “My word!” I gasped. “But why?”

  “It’s worse than that,” Policeman Andy looked Man in the eye. “Do you know about CCTV?”

  Man’s expression remained impassive.

  “You know, darling: like in the supermarket when I watched Baby defeat the shirt-lifter.”

  “I think you’ll find that’s shoplifter, your ladyship. Well, we have a recording that reveals the identity of the arsonist.”

  I clutched Man’s arm. The suspense was unbearable.

  “I’m afraid it’s your Uncle Vanya.”

  “Who?” Man and I chorused.

  “Do you mean Mjomba? Oh, you can’t possibly mean Uncle Mjomba!”

  But Policeman Andy’s face told me that was exactly who he meant. “And there’s more,” he warned.

  “Go on!”

  “Official complaints have been made by the parents of three schoolboys who claim their sons were assaulted by some kind of wild ape man or Sasquatch.”