Gerald Durrell (29 page)

It was the grip the
Tailor had on my arm that prevented me from being swept down the hill-side in
company with my stick. As it was, when I landed in the water I felt myself
being swept down, until I was brought up with a jerk by the Tailor’s hand, but
this jerk nearly threw him alongside me into the water. Bent almost double to
keep his balance he roared for help, and the others jumped back into the stream
and laid hold of whatever bits of my anatomy they could see, and hauled us both
to safety. Panting and shivering and sodden, we continued our way to camp.

The last
half-mile was the worst, for we had to clamber down the escarpment, crawling
from boulder to boulder, until we reached the level strip where the camp
awaited us. Only visions of dry clothes, a hot meal and a drink kept me going.
But when we reached the camp a dreadful sight met our eyes: the tiny unassuming
stream that had whispered and twinkled so modestly twenty feet from my tent,
was now a lusty roaring cataract, Swollen with its own power it had burst its tiny
banks and leapt upon the camp. The carriers’ flimsy huts had been swept away as
though they had never existed; half the kitchen was a wreck and the floor
knee-deep in water. Only my tent was safe, perched as it was on a slight
hillock, but even so the ground under and around it was soggy and shuddery with
water. There was no firewood and the only means of heating food was the
solitary Tilly lamp. Under these conditions there was only one thing to do: we
all crawled into the tent . . . myself and twelve Africans in a tent that had
originally been designed to accommodate two at the most! We boiled pints of
hot, sweet chocolate over the lamp, and drank it out of a strange variety of
dishes ranging from tin mugs to animal plates. For three hours we sat there,
while the rain drummed on the taut, damp canvas, then gradually it died away,
and the mountain was enveloped in great drifts of white cloud. The carriers
became busy rebuilding their little shelters, and as I watched them I suddenly
thought for the first time of the
ju-ju
. Well, the first round certainly
belonged to it: my leg was very bad, and the rain made everything more
difficult, and hunting almost impossible. I had a bad night, and the next day
it rained solidly and dismally from dawn to nightfall, and my leg showed no
improvement. Reluctantly I came to the conclusion that it would be more
sensible to call it a day and give in to the
ju-ju
: down in Bakebe, at
least, I could rest my leg in comfort and be doing some useful work, but
sitting up on top of N’da Ali was not doing anyone any good. So I gave the
orders to pack up and said we would leave the next morning, whereupon everyone
except myself looked very pleased.

The next morning
was radiant: as we set off the sun shone down on us, and there was not a cloud
in the sky. A mass of tiny sandflies, which appeared from nowhere, accompanied
us down, biting us unmercifully and, I thought, a little triumphantly. When we
reached the level forest at the foot of N’da Ali they disappeared as
mysteriously as they had come.

As I hobbled
down the road to Bakebe I comforted myself with the thought that I had, at
least, got a few nice specimens from the mountain. I turned to look at her: in
that clear morning light she seemed so near that you could stretch out your
hand and run your fingers through that thick pelt of forest. Her cliffs blushed
pink and gleaming in the sun, with here and there on their surfaces a pale,
twisting thread of waterfall, the only sign of the storm.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF

CHOLMONDELEY

SHORTLY before
we left our hill-top hut at Bakebe and travelled down to our last camp at
Kumba, we had to stay with us a most unusual guest in the shape of
Cholmondeley, known to his friends at Chumley.

Chumley was a
full-grown chimpanzee; his owner, a District Officer, was finding the ape’s
large size rather awkward, and he wanted to send him to London Zoo as a
present, so that he could visit the animal when he was back in England on
leave. He wrote asking us if we would mind taking Chumley back with us when we
left, and depositing him at his new home in London, and we replied that we
would not mind at all. I don’t think that either John or myself had the least
idea how big Chumley was: I know that I visualized an ape of about three years
old, standing about three feet high. I got a rude shock when Chumley moved in.

He arrived in
the back of a small van, seated sedately in a huge crate. When the doors of his
crate were opened and Chumley stepped out with all the ease and self-confidence
of a film star, I was considerably shaken, for, standing on his bow legs in a
normal slouching chimp position, he came up to my waist, and if he had
straightened up, his head would have been on a level with my chest. He had huge
arms, and must have measured at least twice my measurements round his hairy
chest. Owing to bad tooth growth both sides of his face were swollen out of all
proportion, and this gave him a weird pugilistic look. His eyes were small,
deepset and intelligent; the top of his head was nearly bald owing, I
discovered later, to his habit of sitting and rubbing the palms of his hand
backwards across his head, an exercise which seemed to afford him much pleasure
and which he persisted in until the top of his skull was quite devoid of hair.
This was no young chimp as I had expected, but a veteran of about eight or nine
years old, fully mature, strong as a powerful man and, to judge by his
expression, with considerable experience of life. Although he was not exactly a
nice chimp to look at (I had seen more handsome), he certainly had a terrific
personality: it hit you as soon as you set eyes on him. His little eyes looked
at you with a great intelligence, and there seemed to be a glitter of ironic
laughter in their depths that made one feel uncomfortable.

He stood on the
ground and surveyed his surroundings with a shrewd glance, and then he turned
to me and held out one of his soft, pink-palmed hands to be shaken,with exactly
that bored expression that one sees on the faces of professional hand-shakers.
Round his neck was a thick chain, and its length drooped over the tailboard of
the lorry and disappeared into the depths of his crate. With an animal of less
personality than Chumley, this would have been a sign of his subjugation, of
his captivity. But Chumley wore the chain with the superb air of a Lord Mayor;
after shaking my hand so professionally, he turned and proceeded to pull the
chain, which measured some fifteen feet, out of his crate. He gathered it up
carefully into loops, hung it over one hand and proceeded to walk into the hut
as if he owned it. Thus, in the first few minutes of arrival, Chumley had made
us feel inferior, and had moved in not, we felt, because we wanted it, but
because he did. I almost felt I ought to apologize for the mess on the table
when he walked in.

He seated
himself in a chair, dropped his chain on the floor, and then looked hopefully
at me. It was quite obvious that he expected some sort of refreshment after his
tiring journey. I roared out to the kitchen for them to make a cup of tea, for
I had been warned that Chumley had a great liking for the cup that cheers.
Leaving him sitting in the chair and surveying our humble abode with
ill-concealed disgust, I went out to his crate, and in it I found a tin plate
and a battered tin mug of colossal proportions. When I returned to the hut
bearing these Chumley brightened considerably, and even went so far as to
praise me for my intelligence.

“Ooooooo, umph!”
he said, and then crossed his legs and continued his inspection of the hut. I
sat down opposite him and produced a packet of cigarettes. As I was selecting
one a long black arm was stretched across the table, and Chumley grunted in
delight. Wondering what he would do I handed him a cigarette, and to my
astonishment he put it carefully in the corner of his mouth. I lit my smoke and
handed Chumley the matches thinking that this would fool him. He opened the
box, took out a match, struck it, lit his cigarette, threw the matches down on
the table, crossed his legs again and lay back in his chair inhaling
thankfully, and blowing clouds of smoke out of his nose. Obviously he had vices
in his makeup of which I had been kept in ignorance.

Just at that
moment Pious entered bearing the tray of tea: the effect on him when he saw me
sitting at the table with the chimp, smoking and apparently exchanging gossip,
was considerable.

“Eh . . . aehh!”
he gasped, backing away.

“Whar . . .
hooo,” said Chumley, sighting the tea and waving one hand madly.

“Na whatee that,
sah?” asked Pious, from the doorway. “This is Chumley,” I explained, “he won’t
hurt you. Put the tea on the table.”

Pious did as he
was told and then retreated to the door again. As I poured tea and milk into
Chumley’s mug, and added three tablespoons of sugar, he watched me with a
glittering eye, and made a soft “ooing” noise to himself. I handed him the mug
and he took it carefully in both hands. There was a moment’s confusion when he
tried to rid himself of the cigarette, which he found he could not hold as well
as the mug; he solved the problem by placing the cigarette on the table. Then
he tested the tea carefully with one lip stuck out, to see if it was too hot.
As it was, he sat there and blew on it until it was the right temperature, and
then he drank it down. When he had finished the liquid there still remained the
residue of syrupy sugar at the bottom, and as Chumley’s motto was obviously
waste not want not, he balanced the mug on his nose and kept it there until the
last of the sugar had trickled down into his mouth. Then he held it out for a
refill.

Chumley’s crate
was placed at a convenient point about fifty yards from the hut, next to a
great gnarled tree stump to which I attached his chain. From here he could get
a good view of everything that went on in and around the hut, and as we were
working he would shout comments to me and I would reply. That first day he
created an uproar, for no sooner had I left him chained up and gone into the
hut to do some work, than a frightful upheaval took place among the monkeys. All
these were tethered on ropes under a palm-leaf shelter just opposite the hut.
Chumley, after I had left him, felt bored, so looking around he perceived some
sizeable rocks lying about within easy reach. Arming himself with these he
proceeded to have a little underarm bowling practice. The first I knew of this
was when I heard shrill screams and chatterings from the Drills and Guenons,
and dashing out I was just in time to see a rock the size of a cabbage land in
their midst, fortunately missing them all. If one of these rocks had hit a
monkey it would have been squashed flat. Seizing a stick I raced down upon
Chumley waving it and shouting at him, trying to appear fearsome, while all the
time I was wondering what was going to happen if I tried to deal out punishment
to an animal almost my own size and with twice my strength, when I was armed
with only a short stick that seemed ridiculously flimsy. However, to my
surprise, Chumley saw me coming and promptly lay on the ground, covering his
face and his head with his long arms, and proceeded to scream at the top of his
voice. I gave him two cuts with the stick across his back, and it had about as
much effect as if I had tried to demolish St Paul’s Cathedral with a toothpick.
His back was broad and flat, solid muscle as hard as iron.

“You are a very
wicked animal,” I said sternly, and Chumley, realizing that punishment was
apparently over, sat up and started to remove bits of leaf from himself.

“Whoooooo . . .”
he said, glancing up at me shyly.

“If you do that
again I will have to give you a really good beating,” I continued, wondering if
anything short of a tree trunk would make any impression on him.

“Arrrrrr . . .
oooo,” said Chumiey. He shifted forward, squatted down and commenced to roll up
my trouser leg, and then search my calf for any spots, bits of dirt, or other
microscopic blemishes. While he was thus engaged I called the animal staff and
had them remove every rock from the vicinity. Later, after giving the beast yet
another talking to, I left him, and shortly afterwards I noticed him digging
hopefully in the earth near his crate, presumably in search of more rocks.

That night, when
I carried Chumley’s food and drink of tea out to him, he greeted me with loud
“hoo hoos” of delight, and jogged up and down beating his knuckles on the
ground. Before he touched his dinner, however, he seized one of my hands in his
and carried it to his mouth. With some trepidation I watched as he carefully
put one of my fingers between his great teeth and very gently bit it. Then I
understood: in the chimpanzee world to place your finger between another ape’s
teeth and to do the same with his, is a greeting and sign of trust, for to
place a finger in such a vulnerable position is a sure display of your belief
in the other’s friendliness. So Chumley was flattering me by treating me as he
would another chimp. Then he set to and soon polished off his meal. When he had
finished I sat beside him on the ground, and he went carefully through my
pockets and examined everything I had on me.