Monkey Business (7 page)

Zed laughed. ‘Under half of what this dude does – I’m around seventy kilos,’ he said.

Felix’s eyes bulged. A gorilla was twice the size of Zed! And Zed was already the tallest man Felix knew – his legs went on forever.

‘OK, definitely not a gorilla then,’ Felix said, shaking his head vigorously.

‘An orang-utan?’ Zed asked. ‘Look at this hairy guy. Says here that “orang-utan” means “man of the forest”.’

Felix read the information out loud: ‘“Orangutans spend nearly all of their time in the trees. Every night they make nests, from branches and foliage in which they sleep. They are
more solitary than other apes.” What does “solitary” mean?’ he asked.

‘Means they’re loners – they don’t like company,’ Zed explained.

Felix peered at the photo of the fluffy, scruffy, orange ape on the screen. ‘That could be a good thing,’ he said thoughtfully. After all, he wouldn’t be able to have an
orang-utan living inside the house with Dyson and Colin and Hammer anyway, not to mention with Mum and Dad and Merv. And if orang-utans liked sleeping in nests in the trees, there were two or three
fantastic climbing trees out in the garden. Yes! The more Felix thought of it, the more he just knew that an orangutan would be a much easier animal to look after than an elephant. Mind you, there
was something about the expression on the orang-utan’s face that reminded Felix a bit of Merv first thing in the morning. Felix frowned. He hoped the ape would not be as moody as his older
brother.

‘Hey, look at this one!’ Zed hooted, pointing to a particularly fuzzy creature. ‘He’s called “Regis”. What a great name! You could call him
“Reggie”.’

But Felix was not listening. He was already completely captivated by what he was reading on screen. Regis had been in a really bad way before the WWF had found him: he’d been raised by
humans who had mistreated him and not given him enough food. How could anyone be so mean to such a clever, fun-loving animal? Felix had already made up his mind. He didn’t care about the
elephant idea any more. He didn’t care what Flo said. He didn’t even care if she went off with Millie Hampton and the Girly Pink Brigade and left him digging all the way to Australia on
his own. He had decided: he was going to adopt an orang-utan. And not just any orang-utan. He was going to adopt Regis, bring him home and look after him forever.

Over tea, Mum and Silver and Zed got into a long and boring discussion about Energy. Felix didn’t bother trying to follow the details of it. He knew that Zed thought
people used too much of it and Mum thought Felix
had
too much of it. That’s where he stopped trying to understand.

The one good thing about Boring Conversations was that they could be used as a cover for Much More Important Conversations. Felix leaned in close to Flo and told her about Regis.

‘Flo,’ he started in a low and determined tone, ‘I need to talk to you urgently.’

‘So do I!’ said Flo, flicking a cautious look at the grown-ups. ‘Silver says I might have been a monkey in a Previous Life. Apparently there is this thing called
ree-in-kar-nay-shun, which I think is a different language and which means that you can have a life as an animal before or even after your life as a human, anyway—’

‘Flo, it is animals that I need to talk to you about. Really, really urgently,’ Felix hissed.

‘Oh! Did you do it? Has Zed found you an elephant? What did he say about feeding it?’ Flo asked. She was suddenly so excited that she did not seem to mind that Felix had interrupted
her.

‘That’s exactly what I want to talk to you about,’ Felix went on, his brain whirring as he tried to think of the most persuasive way of telling Flo that she was not going to
get what she had thought she was getting, but something a whole lot better instead.

‘Go on then!’ Flo urged. She was shifting the bean part of her beany-cheese crunch from one side of the plate to the other to make it look as though she was eating it while dropping
bits surreptitiously on the floor in Dyson’s direction.

‘What is
in
this? I can’t see anything that is truly real food for humans,’ Flo muttered.

‘It’s OK once you get used to it. Put ketchup on it,’ Felix advised, pushing the bottle towards her.

Flo shook her head violently and pulled an I-am-disgusted face. ‘You were saying – about the elephant?’

‘Actually it’s an orang-utan,’ Felix blurted out.

‘What’s an orang-utan?’ Flora asked, frowning in puzzlement.

‘The elephant – it’s not an elephant any more, it’s an orang-utan,’ said Felix.

Flo gave a growl that sounded like an angry cat and pushed her plate away. ‘Are you telling me that we are
not
getting an elephant?’ she asked.

Felix crossed his arms grumpily and said rather loudly, forgetting that he didn’t want Mum to be listening, ‘I just think an elephant is a stupid idea – there is no way there
is room for it in the house OR the garden! I have tried with cardboard boxes and it is what Dad would call a No Brainer. Whereas I have at least three trees which would fit an orang-utan and which
are very fantastic for climbing, and that is what orang-utans like.’

Flo stared at Felix very hard. Felix shuffled his chair back from the table. He was worried that she might be able to melt him or zap him into tiny pieces with a stare like that. But he kept his
resolve and said firmly: ‘It’s
my
birthday, and I don’t want an elephant. I’ve decided. I want an orang-utan. He’s been mistreated by nasty humans and he needs
a good home. And he’s called Reggie.’

‘REGGIE?’ Flo exploded. ‘What kind of a stupid grandad-type name is that? You are a weirdo, Felix Stowe.’

The grown-ups round the table had gone very quiet and were all watching this spectacle. Zed was the first to break the silence. ‘Hey, guys – don’t you like my cooking?’
he asked.

Felix felt hot around the ears. ‘No! I mean, yes, I do. Flo is just a Fussy Eater, that’s all.’

Flo made a noise halfway between a gasp and a shout and crossed her arms grumpily. ‘You are being horrible!’ she cried. ‘And I hate you and I hate beans
and
cheese
and
crunch and I absolutely TOTALLY hate orang-utans!’

‘What’s going on?’ Mum asked sharply.

‘Erm, Flo – ever had your hair braided?’ Silver interrupted hastily.

‘No. Why?’ Flo asked with narrowed eyes.

‘Well, I brought some stuff along to show you – wanna see?’ Silver asked, pushing her chair back. ‘Can we be excused, Marge?’ she asked Mum.

‘Good idea,’ Mum said enthusiastically. ‘Felix can help me clear these plates and bring the pudding over.’

Zed winked at Felix. He waited until Flo and Silver had left the room and then whispered, ‘Girls, eh? Will we ever understand them?’

Felix shook his head unhappily.

‘Be cool, man,’ said Zed. ‘Whatever it is, nothing is a match for Silver’s hair-braiding and chocolate brownies. Flo’ll be a pushover after that, just you
see.’

They went into the kitchen with the dirty plates and helped Mum stack the dishwasher and wash up the pots and pans and then they collected the strawberries and brownies to take back out to the
table.

‘If we’re quick enough, we might be able to get a helping in while the girls are doing their hair,’ Zed teased, reaching for the plate of brownies and snaffling a couple.

‘Down, Dyson! Chocolate is really bad for dogs,’ Felix cried, pushing Dyson’s snout away from the plate.

‘Down, Zed, as well for that matter!’ Silver admonished. She had reappeared with a transformed Flo.

Felix nearly choked on the chunk of broken-off brownie Zed had shoved his way. Flo looked like a frightened hedgehog who had fallen into a magpie’s nest and come out covered in bits of
foil and multicoloured rubbish.

‘Wha—?’ Felix blurted out.

‘Ah,’ said Mum, biting her lip and trying not to laugh.

‘Doesn’t she look great?’ Silver cut in quickly.

‘Er,’ said Felix.

‘So. What’s up?’ Flo said casually, twirling a braid round her fingers and standing kind of sideways, with one hand on one hip: a position that she obviously thought made her
look very grown-up and sophisticated. Like one of those people on the posters Merv had in his room. Not that Felix had ever had a proper close-up look at those posters, as Merv didn’t let
anyone go into his room. He had a handwritten notice on his door that said ‘Come in here and you’re dead’, which sort of put Felix off.

Felix puffed noisily to cover up the panicky laughter fit that was building momentum in his chest.

Zed coughed loudly and said, ‘Last one to the table gets NO chocolate!’

The next morning Flo told Felix that the minute she had got home her mum had made her take all the braids and bits of ribbon and beads out of her hair.

‘And if it wasn’t for the fact that having braids in your hair looks Totally Mega Lush, I am really not altogether positive that I will be going through that all over again in a
hurry.’

Her mum had tugged and pulled so hard that Flo said she was sure her eyes were going to actually fall out of her head and roll on to the floor. ‘It felt like my head was truly bleeding. I
said to Mum, “You will have to take me to the Accident and Emergency place which is called A and E and they will make you sign a form to say that you have hurt your own
child.”’

But Mrs Small had not been worried about going to the A and E. She had been more worried about Flo ‘looking like a rubbish tip’ and had washed Flo’s hair twice, which was not
something Flo liked happening even once. The result of all the pulling and brushing and washing was that Flo’s hair was extremely fly-away-ish the next day.

‘Well, it serves you right, Flora Eleanor Small!’ Her mum was still going on about it when they reached the pedestrian crossing right outside the school gates. ‘I mean, I do
not wish to be rude about your uncle’s girlfriend, Felix, but doing Flora’s hair like that on a school night? It is quite obvious that she does not have children of her own! And, Flora,
you KNOW your teachers will not put up with—’

‘Oh-KAY, Mum!’ Flora interjected. ‘Gotta go now – the bell’s gone.’

Flo rolled her eyes at Felix as they leaped from the car, dragging their rucksacks behind them.

‘Honestly, Mum is being quite impossible at the moment,’ Flo huffed as she and Felix made it to the classroom with seconds to spare. ‘And you should have heard her ranting when
I just
mentioned
that it might be nice to have an orangutan as a pet. I think to start with she thought my Extremely Brilliant Idea about the orang-utan was all a big joke. She laughed even
more than a hyena when I told her that the reason for my Extremely Brilliant Idea was that Silver had said I had possibly been a monkey in a previous life, so it made sense that I would totally and
utterly understand a monkey’s brainwaves. And then Mum realized that I was absolutely deadly serious, so she just screamed at me about how it was a shame that I didn’t put as much
effort into my General Good Behaviour as I did into coming up with crazy idiotic make-believe plans and that I was old enough now to really know better.’

‘Wow,’ said Felix. His eyes were out on stalks. He was sorely tempted to correct Flo over the minor detail that it had in fact been
his
Extremely Brilliant Idea to adopt an
orang-utan instead of an elephant. But then he remembered Flo’s mood from the night before.

‘So,’ he said tentatively, ‘you reckon . . . an orang-utan?’

Flo arched one eyebrow at Felix and said, ‘Absolutely. An orang-utan will make a perfect pet. After all you can play games with an orangutan, Silver says. Silver says they are so
intelligent. That would make sense about me being an ape in a previous life. Did you know they can actually work a computer? And Silver says that they make tools like humans do. Orang-utans make
umbrellas for themselves out of big leaves when it rains, and they use sticks to get honey from beehives. They are very, very brainy. Silver says orang-utans have hands like humans! Not like
– I don’t know –
elephants
, for example, which do not even have hands and are so big and difficult to manage as pets. And they are used to being on their own because they
are Solitary Beasts, so if we adopt one it will not be missing a huge family of other orang-utans, unlike an elephant, which lives in a group so it would miss all its relations. Honestly, who on
earth would want something as huge as an
elephant
for a pet?’ And she roared with laughter as if the whole idea was the most preposterous idea any living person could ever have.

‘Right,’ said Felix.

He couldn’t help thinking that he had been let off very lightly. He had been expecting Flo to make him suffer an awful lot longer for changing their plans.

What a relief. He could stop worrying now and just get on with planning for the arrival of Reggie the orang-utan.

*

The next day, Felix didn’t see that much of Flo as she had her music lesson at lunchtime, so she went into second lunch while Felix was out playing at the bug base on his
own. Sometimes he was lonely when Flo wasn’t there to do bug base with him, but sometimes he secretly quite liked it. Although she was his best friend, Felix thought that Mum was right when
she said Flo could be a Bit Much. Besides, being on your own when you’ve got Things to Think About, like orang-utans and how to adopt them, was no bad thing.

At the end of the day Flo ran to catch up with Felix as he made his way to the front to look out for Mum.

‘So,’ Flo said, pulling Felix round to face her and fixing him with a determined steely glare. ‘What will it eat?’

‘What will
what
eat?’ said Felix.

‘The orang-utan!’ Flo said exasperatedly. ‘I tried to ask you about it in that lesson on the Romans but you weren’t listening.’

‘Bananas, I s’pose?’ offered Felix, yawning. It had been hard to concentrate on all those Invasions the Romans had done while at the same time worrying about how Mum would
react when Reggie arrived. One of the only interesting facts about the Romans was that they had been used to having Really Wild Animals like lions around the place. It was a shame his mum was not a
Roman, Felix pondered.