Precious and the Monkeys (4 page)

It was, as you can imagine, a very happy school. The teachers were happy to be working in such a nice town, the children were happy to have kind teachers who did not shout at them too much, and even the school cat, who had a comfortable den outside, was happy with the mice that could be chased most days.

But then something nasty happened. That is what the world is sometimes like: everything seems fine, and then something happens to spoil things.

What happened was that there was a thief. Now, most people don't steal things. Most people – and that certainly includes you and me – know that things that belong to other people belong to other people. For many of us, that is Rule Number One, and sometimes you see it written out like this:

And Rule Number Two? Well that's another matter altogether, and we all know what it is anyway. So, a thief … and a thief at school too!

The first person to notice what was going on was Tapiwa (TAP-EE-WAH) a girl in the same class as Precious.

“Do you know what?” she whispered to Precious as they made their way home after school one afternoon.

“No,” said Precious. “What?”

“There must be a thief at school,” said Tapiwa, looking over her shoulder in case anybody heard what she had to say. “I brought a piece of cake to school with me this morning. I left it in my bag in the corridor outside the classroom.” She paused before she went on. “I was really looking forward to eating it at break-time.”

“I love cake,” said Precious, closing her eyes and thinking of some of the cakes she had enjoyed. Iced cakes. Cakes with jam on top of them. Cakes sprinkled with sugar and then dipped in little coloured sugar-balls. There were so many cakes … and all of them were so delicious.

“Somebody took my cake,” Tapiwa complained. “I had wrapped it in a small piece of paper. Well, it was gone, and I found the paper lying on the floor.”

Precious frowned. “Gone?”

“Eaten up,” said Tapiwa. “There were crumbs on the floor and little bits of icing. I picked them up and tasted them. I could tell that they came from my cake.”

“Did you tell the teacher?” asked Precious.

Her friend sighed. “Yes,” she said. “But I don't think that she believed me. She
said, ‘Are you sure you didn't forget that you ate it?' She said that this sometimes happened. People ate a piece of cake and then forgot that they had done so.”

Precious gazed at Tapiwa. Was she the sort of person to eat a piece of cake and then forget all about it? She did not think so.

“It was stolen,” said Tapiwa. “That's what happened. There's a thief in the school. Who do you think it is?”

“I don't know,” said Precious. She found it hard to imagine any member of their class doing something like that. Everybody seemed so honest. And yet, when you came to think of it, if there were grown-up thieves, then those thieves must have been children once, and perhaps they were already thieves even when they were young. Or did people only become thieves a bit later on, when they turned sixteen or something like that? It was a very interesting question, and she would
have to think about it a bit more. Which is what she did as she walked home that day, under that high, hot African sun. She thought about thieves and what to do about them.

T MIGHT HAVE BEEN EASY
for her to forget about it – after all, it was only a piece of cake – but the next day it happened again. This time it was a piece of bread that was stolen – not an ordinary piece of bread, though: this one was covered in delicious red jam. You can lose a plain piece of bread and not think twice about it, but when you lose one spread thickly with red jam it's an altogether more serious matter.

The owner of this piece of bread (with jam) was a small boy called Sepo. Everybody liked this boy because he had a habit of saying funny things. And people like that, because there are enough sad
things in the world as it is. If somebody can say something funny, then that often makes everybody feel a bit better. Try it yourself: say something funny and see how pleased everybody is.

This is a picture of Sepo.

You will see that he is smiling. And this is a picture of the piece of bread and red jam. Yes, if you saw such a piece of bread sitting on a plate your mouth would surely begin to water. And yes, you might imagine how delicious it would taste. But would you really eat it if you knew it belonged to somebody else?