Saving Abbie

by Allan Baillie

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Ian first met Abbie the orangutan when they were trapped together on a sinking freighter in the middle of a cyclone. Now Ian is taking Abbie back home, giving her freedom in the jungles of Borneo.

  But it’s not as simple as he thought it would be. There is something much worse than a cyclone waiting for them this time …

  Saving Abbie is an incredible adventure. But it is also a remarkable and thought-provoking insight into the fast-disappearing world of the extraordinary orangutan. And Abbie herself, full of mischief and charm and pathos, is a character you won’t easily forget.

  ALSO BY ALLAN BAILLIE

  Adrift

  Little Brother

  Riverman

  Eagle Island

  Megan’s Star

  Mates

  Hero

  The China Coin

  Little Monster

  The Bad Guys

  Magician

  The Dream Catcher

  Songman

  Secrets of Walden Rising

  Wreck!

  The Last Shot

  The Excuse

  Imp

  Foggy

  The Treasure Hunters

  Picture Books

  Drac and the Gremlin

  The Boss

  Rebel!

  Old Magic

  Dragon Quest

  Star Navigator

  Archie the Good Bad Wolf

  Non-fiction

  Legends

  ALLAN BAILLIE

  Puffin Books

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Australia)

  250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada)

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  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd

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  Penguin Ireland

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  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd

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  Penguin Group (NZ)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Penguin Books Australia, 2000

  Copyright © Allan Baillie, 2000

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This project was assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  www.puffin.com.au

  ISBN: 978-1-74-228309-8

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  1 ESCAPE

  2 ABBIE

  3 YOS

  4 GHOST SHIP

  5 JUNGLE

  6 HARRY

  7 THE BOYFRIEND

  8 BUDDIES

  9 NIGHT

  10 NEST

  11 THE FALL

  12 CHANGING

  13 THE TOWER

  14 PARTING

  PART TWO

  15 UPRIVER

  16 MONKEY BOY

  17 GADAS

  18 GISTOK

  19 MIST

  20 CAS

  21 BROWN BERRY

  22 THE PARTY TREE

  23 THE KING

  24 PEBBLE

  25 RAGE

  26 CROSSING

  27 THE FIRE

  28 HAZE

  29 THE DARK

  30 THE SCREAM

  31 THE DROP

  32 CAGE

  33 SOFTLY, SOFTLY

  34 THE HUNT

  35 STAG

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book could not have been written without the generous help of the people working with the orangutans at Tanjung Puting, and not without Jurjen Ratsma, and two splendid books:

  Reflections of Eden by Biruté M F Galdikas (Indigo, 1995) and Orang-Utans in Borneo by Gisela Kaplan and Lesley Rogers (University of New England Press, 1994). And also the BBC video David Attenborough’s World of Wildlife: Great Apes – Chimpanzees and Orang Utans.

  Thank you all very much.

  PART ONE

  Ian woke in the dead of night.

  He opened his eyes wide in the dark, and for a moment he thought that he was still lying in his old bed, in his old room with its chocolate and glue on the carpet. But instead he was smelling mosquito coil and burning sandalwood, a long way from home. He squeezed his eyelids together and tried to catch the comfortable image of his house in Melbourne, but it was gone.

  What woke you?

  Ian opened his eyes again and this time he kept them open. He was in a small room, with moonlight drifting past the still curtains. There was the bed, with a hard mattress, two sheets and a pillow. The bed had probably never seen a blanket. There was a cupboard clutching a few bent coat-hangers, a dressing-table capped with a white cloth and a small mirror. There was also a plastic wastepaper bin, the mosquito coil glowing feebly on the vinyl floor, and a door. And that was it.

  But the door was moving open, creaking on its hinges.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Ian whispered.

  Nobody, you stupid kid. It’s just been left open.

  Abbie!

  ‘Abbie?’ Ian jerked up from the pillow and looked into the dark corners of the room. Nothing.

  No, no, no! What have you done now? How can you be that thick? Ian swung quickly from the bed.

  The key was in the lock.

  Oh no, that’s wrong. You can remember now, can’t you? You closed the door and locked it, definitely. And you took the key out and put it on the dressing-table. Right?

  With Abbie watching. Oh, great.

  Ian yanked his shorts on and pulled the door wide open.

  ‘Abbie?’ Ian hissed the name. He slipped into the dim corridor, towards a fly-speckled yellow light and a cat with her litter huddled in a corner. But before he reached the cat there was the door of Mum and Dad’s room.

  Tell them? Wake them up and tell them you couldn’t handle Abbie – she was too smart for you.

  Not yet, not yet.

  He padded up to the corner. The dusty-grey cat lifted her head, watching him tensely but without moving. A white kitten blinked at him and tumbled over its mother’s body.

  ‘See anyone, cat?’ Ian murmured. ‘No, nothing to frighten you?’

  Abbie would never frighten anyone.

  Ian moved past the cat’s corner through the corridor to the concrete roof area. He passed the wire clothesline and a disk that was used to pick up TV shows via satellite, then he passed the toilet, and a bathroom – a mahdi. He opened the toilet door, showing a wide slot in the floor between two raised footprint-shaped tiles, and a tiled water container with a scoop. You put your feet on the raised tiles, squatted and used the scoop to flush. Abbie had been fascinated by this, but she wasn’t here now.

  He tried the neighbouring mahdi, a
deep trough of water with another scoop. You threw water all over yourself instead of turning the tap in the shower. Abbie didn’t like this much. She didn’t like getting wet. Nothing here.

  Ian looked around at the shadows of the concrete roof and the chipped tiles on the nearby buildings. He called softly, feeling like he was calling in a graveyard.

  Have to tell them, he thought bleakly. But what can they do?

  He walked slowly from the roof back to the dim corridor, giving himself time to think. There was a dark entrance to his left; he had walked past it on his way to the roof. He peered into the entrance and down the shadowed wooden steps to the door and the street.

  If she’s gone out there, that’s it. You’ll never see her again.

  Ian half tumbled down the steps and pulled at the door. It was closed. It was locked. Both the doorknob catch and the simple lock above it were thrust into the framework.

  All right, okay. But you can open the lock simply by turning the small knob with your right hand. It wasn’t meant to be a barrier for people on the inside, only for strangers on the street. Twist the doorknob with your left hand while you hold the lock’s knob and the door swings wide. That easy.

  Ian looked out into the still street and felt a dull sinking feeling in his stomach. It was so alien. Across the street the creaking tavern looked like it had been closed for years. Opposite, there was a forgotten grey government building fenced by wire mesh, with a glint of a moonlit river beyond. A few hours ago the town roared with motorbikes and trucks, but now there was nobody out there, not a whisper of life, not even the flicker of a moving shadow. It was like an old black-and-white photo hanging on a wall.

  ‘Kumai,’ Ian whispered the word, as if trying to make the dead town stir and breathe.

  But it didn’t help. If he crossed the road he would be lost. Lost in a small river town in south Borneo. With the language different, buildings different, food different – everything was different. Out there he’d seen strange wooden ships nudging the wharves, a restaurant and a crowded market – strange star fruit, hanging chooks, bottles with something floating inside. Mum went through the market as if she lived there. She would, but that was different. There’s nothing out there like home.

  And Abbie? She would be worse than him. The streets of Kumai would bewilder and frighten her – and that’s before the traffic starts. Where can she go? Along that street is a long road to a place called Pangkalanbun and its steaming airport. And farms. She won’t like the farms. Maybe a few years ago she could’ve just stepped into the forest. Then the thick forest had spread from coast to coast on the third biggest island in the world. Then it was almost safe, but now …

  Ian leaned weakly on the doorknob.

  Abbie could open the door with her eyes closed. If she’d gone out there, how do you start looking for her? Run round the streets and shout her name?

  Stop it. Okay. Would you go out there by yourself? Well, Abbie is smart, sometimes smarter than you. She wouldn’t go out there. Not by herself.

  Ian hesitated, then straightened. He closed the door and climbed the steps quickly, glanced out the open roof towards the skeleton shape of the satellite disk, and sucked his lip. Then he walked hurriedly back into the corridor. There was one chance, only one.

  He went past the cat and her litter, past the adventurous white kitten creeping along the wall, past Mum and Dad’s door, past his own wide open room, and reached the patio lounge. There he stopped and sagged weakly against the wall, breathing slowly and deliberately for a few moments.

  There was a colour TV near the lounge entrance, with bamboo chairs eagerly facing it. But it was turned off. One chair was facing away from the TV, out towards the open space and the silent river.

  A long hairy arm flopped from the side of the chair and trailed on the white tiles.

  ‘Why didn’t you say something?’ Ian said. ‘I was looking for you all over the place!’

  Abbie didn’t move, so Ian walked around the chair and sat before her on the low wall that rimmed the patio. ‘Hello,’ he said into her face.

  With one finger, Abbie pushed some sunglasses down her squat nose and peered over them, like an old headmaster.

  ‘And where’d you get those?’

  She lifted a half-empty glass of cola from a side table and sucked thoughtfully through the straw.

  ‘And that too! Dad is going to kill you when he remembers where he left his sunglasses. Give over.’

  Abbie shook her head. She folded her legs under her and inspected a curled black foot.

  ‘All right, all right. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. You might wind up as a red ape stew, hey?’

  But Abbie just sucked noisily at the straw. She was a six-year-old orangutan, covered by coarse dark brown-red hair. She had arms longer than her legs, longer than Mum’s legs, and stronger than Dad’s. Her feet were all curved toes and when she walked she used the side of her foot – she went around like a cowboy who had been stuck on his horse for ten weeks.

  But it was her face that made all the difference. She had eyes of liquid green and brown, a small quiet nose in the middle of her face and a mouth so wide, so expressive, that all the time she seemed about to laugh, or yawn, or speak.

  She was an orphan, a shipwrecked orphan.

  That was all of Abbie.

  All that you could see.

  Ian scratched the back of his ear and smiled. ‘What I like about you is you don’t talk all the time. Not like some people I could name. Like Reene, hey?’

  Abbie angled her head.

  ‘Oh, come on. The girl on the sinking ship, okay? Yes, her. Just the three of us on the sinking ship, remember?’ Ian shivered.

  Abbie looked through the glass in her hand and studied Ian’s face.

  ‘You know she wanted to come with us? Here, to Borneo. But her dad didn’t like the idea. It was a long way to come. And wasn’t it?’

  Abbie frowned slightly at Ian, then looked past him towards the river.

  ‘What, you still mad at me?’

  The white kitten from the litter that had been creeping along the corridor was now drifting unsteadily across the patio. Abbie crunched at the ice in the glass and turned from the river to stare at the kitten.

  ‘Oh yeah. Look, if it wasn’t for me you’d be stuck in some zoo. Really.’

  Abbie shifted her eyes.

  ‘Yeah. Dad wanted to leave you in one. Maybe we should have, hey? Sure, they would have loved you there, all the fine food you could want, and if you’ve got a belly-ache – well, they’ve got vets and nurses swinging from trees … We’ll go back tomorrow, okay?’

  Abbie blew a gentle raspberry at him.

  ‘No? What? You’re smelling something across that river. Maybe it’s home. The zoo people wouldn’t have got you here. Costs too much. So it was me, me that got you here and don’t you forget it!’

  Abbie put the glass on the table and scratched her shoulder.

  ‘It’s the needles, right? Look, we all had to have the needles to get here. Mum, Dad and me as well as you. Anyhow, you made out that they didn’t worry you. Just shoving your hairy arm at the man with the needle and curling your lip at the rest of us. Yeah, like that.’

  Abbie leaned sideways in the chair and plucked the kitten from the patio floor. The kitten rested in Abbie’s long fingers and blinked at the orangutan’s deep green-brown eyes.

  ‘Oh, it’s the cage. Cages. That it? All right, all right, I can see you getting mad about that.’

  Abbie ignored Ian and put the kitten on her head. Like a hat.

  ‘I did promise on the sinking ship that there’d be no more cages. But there had to be a few more. I wasn’t thinking.’

  Abbie left the kitten on her head and trailed her knuckles on the floor.

  ‘But if you’d been sitting in the plane with us you would’ve tried to fly it.’ Abbie shook her head gently and the kitten’s claws dug into her scalp.

  ‘Oh, yes you would. Remember the helicopter? Yes, t
he one that got us from the sinking ship? You just about put us into the sea that time.’

  Abbie raised the sunglasses, lifted the kitten from her head and inspected the tiny claws.

  ‘Okay, you don’t trust me. I don’t blame you.’

  ‘Ian?’ His dad was calling along the dark corridor. ‘That you?’

  ‘Ah, yes. Me and Abbie.’

  Ian’s dad stepped into the moonlight and rubbed his face. ‘What are you doing up at this hour?’

  Ian gave Abbie a shifty glance. ‘We couldn’t sleep.’

  Abbie put the kitten back on her head and pouted at Dad through Dad’s sunglasses.

  ‘Oh, that blasted ape!’ Dad strode across the lounge and held his hand out to Abbie. ‘Give.’

  Abbie grinned at him but lowered the sunglasses over her eyes.

  ‘Oh, we have a smart ape, have we?’ Dad swept his right hand towards the kitten but Abbie lifted her hand to protect it. ‘Well, for every smart ape there is a smarter ape …’ Dad dived his hand after his sunglasses.

  And was left holding the glass of melting ice. ‘Oh very funny. Ian, get my sunglasses off your bloody ape!’

  Ian leaned forward, not sure what to do. But Abbie took the sunglasses off and presented them to Dad with a slight bowing of the head. Dad took the sunglasses and thrust the ice glass into Abbie’s hand with a snort. ‘You can have that. But, Ian, maybe put the ape back in the cage, just for tonight.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘It would be safer.’ He was still looking at Abbie.

  ‘I promised …’

  ‘It is only an orangutan, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘She is Abbie.’

  Mum came up beside Dad and tugged at his shirt. When he turned to her she simply shook her head.

  ‘No?’ Dad stepped back.

  Mum pointed a finger at Ian. ‘You get some sleep, all right? We have a big day ahead.’ And she led Dad softly away.

  Ian watched them go with a whisper of wonder on his face. ‘You see that? That was Mum, wasn’t it? And Dad … Really? They’ve gone and changed and I haven’t seen it coming. Did you see it? I mean, that was the old Dad with the sunglasses, except this time he didn’t yell. He’s stopped yelling now, and I hardly noticed. In the old days he’d be saying things like I’m too thick to pedal a bike, but now he’s stopped making dumb cracks. Even with you! But maybe that’s because he’s scared that you’re smarter than he is …’