Natural History Page 8

  ‘How good?’

  ‘There’s an unknown primate species.’

  ‘An unknown primate species where?’

  ‘Zaire.’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’

  ‘It’s called the Bili Ape. People have seen it. Photographed it.’

  Patrick enlarged his eyes and said, ‘Wooh!’

  ‘Six weeks,’ said Jane. ‘And not until July. Monkeyland will be solid by then.’

  He spluttered in protest.

  She said, ‘Oh, come on. We’ve done the really hard work. And it’s not till July. We’ve got to plan a schedule. You can’t just throw these things together, not in a place like Zaire.’

  He said nothing, because what he wanted to say was childish—and if he was childish she’d pick up on it and use it against him. It was one of her weapons, and usually it was clinching.

  He said, ‘There’s no way this thing even exists.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Pretty sure.’

  She grinned with one side of her mouth—it was her grin of triumph. It was Napoleonic. It gave her away when she was playing cards, and Scrabble. He’d never told her.

  He said, ‘Don’t talk to me about the coelacanth. I know about the coelacanth.’

  The coelacanth was an ancient fish, long-believed extinct—until 1938, when a living specimen was caught off the coast of South Africa.

  ‘This is different,’ said Patrick. ‘It’s not a deepwater fish, it’s a big fucking monkey. Somebody would’ve noticed it.’

  ‘Like somebody noticed the coelacanth,’ and Patrick groaned theatrically, because she’d mentioned it. She raised her voice to continue, waving him silent. ‘The local fisherman knew about it. They called it the gombessa. And what about the Megamouth shark?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Some boat caught one off the coast of Hawaii. Some research vessel. This was in the mid-seventies. Seventy-five? Whatever. The weirdest thing you ever saw. Fifty rows of teeth. The thing’s a freak, a big freak—twenty, twenty-five feet. Bigger. The size of a bus. And I find it hard to believe that nobody, in the entire history of the world, not one sailor, ever set eyes on this thing, not until one happened to be caught by someone who happened to be a marine scientist.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Come on! It’s exciting, isn’t it? Actually to prove that something exists?’

  ‘And what next? The Yeti? Bigfoot?’

  Her grin of triumph widened and warmed, and when she patted the sofa next to her, Patrick ambled over. He ambled when he’d been drinking, and when he’d lost an argument.

  She said, ‘Babe,’ and rubbed his head.

  She said, ‘It’s been a weird time. A strange couple of years.’

  He nodded.

  ‘It’s going to take a toll,’ she said. ‘It’s bound to. But come on. Look at us.’ She cupped his face in her hands. Her skin was rough. ‘We’re all right, aren’t we?’

  He said, ‘I want to be bored. Just for one year. For a change. One year of boredom.’

  She kissed the tip of his nose.

  He laid his head in her lap. ‘I like being bored,’ he said.

  She played with his hair. ‘No, you don’t.’

  Eventually, he fell asleep.

  She met Richard, Mick and Dave at the airport. Their luggage, on chromium trolleys, seemed ridiculously abundant. She’d brought her grandfather’s trunk. It was lucky; as long as she travelled with it, she’d be safe.

  Patrick had scoffed when she told him, but he’d never allow her to travel without the trunk. It was his talisman, too.

  A week ago, he’d climbed into the spidery attic to take it down. He’d left it in the bedroom, its mouth open, waiting to be filled. She packed without even mentioning it.

  Now Mick was helping the taxi driver remove the trunk from the boot. It was still leprous with its patching of old travel stickers—Excelsior Hotel Rome, TWA Transcontinental—but now she noticed that Patrick had added something to it—a new sticker.

  It was a scribble, a primary-coloured portrait of a chimpanzee, and it read: MONKEYLAND.

  7

  They missed her most in the mornings.

  Usually, Jo woke Patrick. She was in her running clothes

  ‘Coming?’

  He made himself sit up. His head wilted on his neck. He blinked at his lap.

  ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Half-past six.’

  ‘Give me a minute.’

  Together, they stepped outside. The sun was up. Low mist clung to the ground. Their footsteps were amplified by the silence. Unseen crows barked and cawed.

  The exertion and the cool morning air on his face was good. He ran through a stitch. Jo ran at his side, all sharp points and acute angles. Her feet flapped sideways. Her legs helicoptered from the knees down. Her elbows jutted like chicken wings.

  They ran to the corner of the main road and stopped, they rested together on the wet grass. It was an overgrown corner by a roadside junction. Behind them, a fence marked the limits of a field. No cars passed. Their arses got wet. Patrick’s discomfort began to leave him: weightlessness rose in his chest, a low euphoria.

  He stood and grasped the metal pole supporting a road-sign. He looked like a captain at the mast. Jo squatted, forearms on knees. Breathing high and laboured.

  She wheezed, ‘How do you feel?’

  Patrick spat. ‘Good. Terrible. You?’

  ‘Good.’

  Eventually, he tapped his wristwatch and they began to run back again, slow and steady until they were home, the mist burning off in the sunrise, and when they got back, Charlie was up.

  They took turns in the bathroom, took turns preparing breakfast. Patrick was happy to have the Radio 1 Breakfast Show blaring tinnily in every room. Then they piled into the Land-Rover.

  They dropped Jo at Mr Nately’s, and she stood waving goodbye from the gate at the end of the luxuriant, blossoming garden. They never saw her turn, let alone walk to the door.

  If the roads weren’t wet, Patrick let Charlie drive to Monkeyland. It was good, hazardous fun—the windows down and the radio on, motoring down empty roads in the fragile summer morning.

  The aura of recklessness deserted Patrick immediately they got to work.

  Mornings began with a staff meeting, during which the keepers took turns sipping Nescafé and debriefing the room. It was like running a school; each keeper was a teacher, and each exhibit was a classroom—someone was always ill, someone else was being bullied, someone was depressed and, now and again, someone tried to escape.

  After the morning briefing, Patrick sat at his desk and stared at the To-Do list that had been left somewhere conspicuous by Mrs de Frietas, his Personal Assistant. Generally, it wasn’t a long list, but he never got to the end of it, since more pressing jobs always popped up during the day. He rarely took a lunchbreak, eating a sandwich en route to the gibbons, the orangs, the Bachelor Group or the capuchins to inspect the enclosures, listen to keepers’ gripes, monitor the punters.

  When he did get the opportunity for an hour off, he spent it watching the capuchins—cute and very intelligent little monkeys.

  Their enclosure, which they shared with the black-handed spider-monkeys, was surrounded by a moat; capuchins couldn’t swim and feared water. In the moat lived ducks who swam in lazy circles, trailing strings of happy little ducklings.

  What the capuchins liked to do was this: dangle upside-down from a branch that overhung the water, snatch up a straggling duckling, then hustle it to dry land, kill it and eat it.

  Visitors who witnessed this were distressed by the panicking duckling, the haughty, oblivious mother, the cute little monkey with duckling blood smeared round its chittering mouth.

  If they demanded it, Patrick usually refunded their entrance money. He
didn’t like dealing with the punters and he didn’t really care if they were shocked by seeing a monkey eating a duckling. What did they expect?

  But the genius of the capuchins fascinated him. Their compound was like a prison for flesh-crazed mad scientists.

  Around 4 p.m. he went to pick up Jo. She’d be waiting at John Nately’s gate, as if she hadn’t moved all day. She was eating an apple, or she simply stood with a book in one hand, reading.

  Whatever she was doing, she never noticed him arrive. He sat at the wheel, watching her—crunching her apple or holding a book before her face, or just huddling in the rain.

  She made him smile—she always made him smile. And when he honked the horn she always glanced up as if surprised to see him.

  He drove her to Monkeyland and sometimes, she accompanied him as he shambled about his business. But mostly she sat in his office and read books, or wrote essays on Patrick’s work computer—which was excellent, because it meant Patrick couldn’t access his emails or get to his spreadsheets.

  When she grew bored, Patrick sometimes paid her two quid an hour to sort his in-tray. She set the important paperwork in a neat pile on the right side of his desk. Like all neat piles, it soon became invisible.

  Now and again, Charlie took her to feed the old donkeys; she liked the warm, straw, horseshitty smell of them.

  But usually, she just did her homework at Patrick’s desk, or read, erect in his chair with the book two inches from the tip of her nose.

  Sometimes, when Mrs de Frietas slipped out for a crafty Lambert & Buder, which Patrick wasn’t supposed to know about, Jo answered his phone. ‘Patrick Bowman’s phone,’ she would say. ‘How may I help you?’

  Jane finally called from Uganda, near the eastern Zairean border. She was breathless and excited and hassled, and the line was very bad. So he told her everything was fine, that he loved her and the kids missed her, that it was good to hear her voice, and not to worry.

  He didn’t say they already had a big problem.

  There was a weird mood in the Bachelor Group. In the early morning, when the mist was thin, the chimps were sombre and watchful—as if terrible anxieties had kept them awake through the night. Never relaxed, the group, was becoming schismatic. Small, temporary alliances were forming—chimps huddling like Victorian anarchists, then dissolving, often in shrieking twisters of violence.

  Uncle Joe, the dominant bachelor, spent much of his time in furious display. He threw tyres, food. He slapped at the ground. He vocalized rapidly through pursed lips. He pulled his lips back from his teeth and screamed.

  One morning, instead of retreating from Uncle Joe’s display, two younger apes called Gilbert and Rollo responded by attacking him. There was an unpleasant little squabble—shrieking and thumping and kicking and biting—until Gilbert and Rollo retreated to higher ground (their new jungle gym) and squatted there, sulking, grooming themselves by way of displacement.

  Bleeding, haughty, Uncle Joe retreated to a farther corner. Believing himself out of eyesight, he sagged.

  ‘These fucking bastards,’ said Patrick. ‘I wish they’d all die.’

  Harriet, the Head Keeper, gave him a worried look, which he ignored. But she kept squinting at him so he said, ‘Well, honestly.’

  And he saw it on her face: nobody liked the Bachelors.

  She said, ‘What can I say? They’re here, because they’re here, because they’re here.’

  A week later, Charlie noticed Uncle Joe, face down by the water under the shade of a chestnut tree.

  He and Harriet, who carried a tranquillizer pistol at her hip, entered the compound like thieves, scattering dried mangoes and hazelnuts; unusual morsels to distract the fretful Bachelors.

  Many of Uncle Joe’s bones were broken. His testicles had been bitten off. While he lay bleeding and helpless, the Bachelors had stamped on him, bitten him, punched him. They had ripped out his fingernails and torn out his throat.

  The remaining Bachelors watched Charlie and Harriet from their silent gallery. They were wary, embarrassed, curious.

  Mindful of their gaze, Charlie said: ‘Who did it?’

  Harriet licked a dry lower lip.

  ‘All of them.’

  They delayed opening Monkeyland to get Uncle Joe to surgery. But he was dead anyway.

  Charlie had Uncle Joe’s blood on his clothes and face, and Uncle Joe’s blood in his hair and it was beginning to smell.

  He went to shower.

  Patrick chaired that morning’s meeting. Punters were already milling around outside—a little girl eating a 99, her face smeared in chocolate.

  Patrick said, ‘Be honest, none of us is going to miss that old bastard. So tough shit—he’s dead. If I could give the rest of them a containable virus and free up the compound for something more cuddly, I’d do it. But here’s the thing: we’ve already had a high-profile death. And yeah, Rue was a sweetheart. And yeah, the publicity brought in the punters, so God bless her. So—dead Rue means good for business. Dead Uncle Joe? It’s looking like Inspector fucking Morse.’

  Harriet said, ‘You can’t compare it.’

  ‘You can if you’re an idiot with a newspaper to fill in the silly season. What happened to Uncle Joe doesn’t leave this office.’

  They nodded. Patrick shuffled random papers.

  He said, ‘I hate doing this, but if we want to keep food on the table, if we want to keep this place running, we’ve got no choice.’

  The distrustful keepers reminded him of the Bachelor Group. Everyone agreed, and nobody looked him in the eye. He thanked them, dismissed them, and they shuffled out.

  They got rid of the body that evening, and Patrick composed a death notice: Uncle Joe was one of Monkeyland’s great characters and no one who worked with him will ever forget him.

  He had the obituary copied and laminated and put on the information boards outside the Bachelor Compound. They didn’t have a photograph of Uncle Joe; instead, they used the new Monkeyland logo.

  But Uncle Joe had left no clear successor, and peace didn’t settle upon the Bachelors. There were more urgent confabulations, more conspiratorial huddles, more ambitious princes and artful politicians. And there were more deafening displays to amuse and disturb Monkeyland’s paying customers.

  But the violence wasn’t comical. It was explosive and riotous, and the screeches and howls dipped and swooped around the compound like bats.

  Women covered the eyes of their baffled children. Men looked on, fascinated and aroused. And they bared their teeth and pointed while, beneath them, in the compound, chimps broke out in rage and hate and anxiety and blood.

  And at night Patrick turned over, troubled even in his dreams by the war brewing in the Bachelor Compound.

  He was watching the capuchins—longing to see them tackle a full-sized duck—when a junior keeper approached, carrying a handwritten message from Mrs de Frietas. The message told Patrick that

  1) he had a visitor and

  2) he’d left his mobile phone in the office

  3) again

  He thanked the keeper, scrunching up the note, then headed down the hill, finishing his sandwich. He walked past the new children’s climbing frame, erected not far from the entrance, then past the food vans and the visitor lavatories and into the office.

  He nodded curtly to Mrs de Frietas, who thought him work-shy and scruffy, and squeezed past her desk into his office.

  In there was a woman. She had her back to him, watching the punters eating their hot dogs and cones of chips—and she turned at the sound of the door opening.

  Pixie face, pixie hair. She wore tennis shoes, paint-spattered jeans, a man’s checked shirt over a Gap T-shirt. And she wore delicate, wire-framed spectacles. The way the light fell, her eyes were half-obscured behind smudged finger- and thumbprints.

  From behind one ear, past her clavicle a
nd into the neck of her T-shirt, ran a twisting rope of scar tissue. Its nudity was shocking, but Patrick recovered well enough by moving his gaze to the painting the woman carried under one arm. It was wrapped in brown paper.

  She said, ‘Hi,’ and shifted the painting to offer her hand. ‘Sarah Lime.’

  He shook her hand. ‘Patrick. Pleased to … you know.’ Then, hasty and apologetic, he invited her to sit.

  She thanked him and did, setting the painting against his desk. She laced her hands in her lap.

  He sat with elbows on the desk, playing with a Biro.

  She said, ‘Actually, I was hoping to see Jane. Your, um … She came in—to my shop. A while ago. To have a look round. And she …’ She nodded at the brown paper square. ‘She bought this. She decided she wanted it on the spot. It wasn’t actually finished.’

  ‘That sounds like Jane.’

  ‘So—is she? Actually around?’

  ‘Actually, no. She’s in Zaire, of all places.’

  ‘Zaire?’

  ‘Hunting monkeys.’

  She knotted her hands. ‘Okay. Well, not to worry.’

  ‘Right,’ said Patrick. ‘Well, thanks for dropping it off.’

  ‘Right, then.’ Sarah stood, putting her bag on her shoulder.

  Patrick stood, too.

  She said, ‘Best be off.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks again.’

  ‘No problem. I expect I’ll see you again.’

  ‘Absolutely. I must drop round the shop. Gallery. Shop.’

  ‘Quay Lime.’ She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, like someone dancing the hitch-hiker. ‘On the front. By the chip shop. Can’t miss it.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’ He spread a hand to show her the small office crammed with old desks and crappy old filing cabinets and dusty piles of paper—stuff he was supposed to have read and never would, stuff he was supposed to sign but didn’t bother. ‘This place could do with brightening up.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  She hesitated in the doorway, about to say something, but instead she said, ‘Cheers,’ and on the way out she struck her hip on the corner of Mrs de Frietas’s oversized and malevolent desk.