Jungle Out There

William Stafford

Description

Forced to leave their jungle home, Lady Jane and her family move to a semi-detached house in the Black Country town of Dedley, where they try to fit in with modern living, only to find themselves questioning the way people live today and learning that life can still be an adventure wherever you are. This quirky comedy and affectionate spoof of Edgar Rice Burroughs is suitable for fans of fantasy with a sense of humour.

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 22 octobre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785380150
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
JUNGLE OUT THERE
A Suburban Adventure

William Stafford



Publisher Information
Published in 2014 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
The right of William Stafford to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
Copyright © 2014 William Stafford
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.



Dedication
For Giles



Chapter One
In which we arrive at our new home and meet the neighbours
The hand remembers. It has been years since I last put an actual pen to actual paper and, although unfamiliar at first, the action of writing is stirring memories in my muscles and the quality of my penmanship is improving.
I used to keep a journal like this when I was a teenager. In it I would document the gossip of every school day and give ink to the thoughts I dare not voice. I secreted the volume in my locker, cunningly disguised as a boring old Latin grammar. No one at the Finesse Academy for Young Ladies would dream of picking it up - I would have been mortified and probably sent down too if they had.
What happened to those sensational records of my youth, I don’t know. So much of my life is lost, missing or misplaced. It’s one of the reasons I have taken up this old habit. Another is at the insistence of my solicitor, neighbour and friend, Mr Lyons. He is of the opinion that a first-hand account of my reintegration into civilised society would go like something off a shovel. I said I would give it my best shot just to appease him. I believe he is motivated by the prospect of personal gain - If I make any money I shall be able to recompense him for the many and varied services he has done for me and my family since our arrival in Dedley.
Indeed, since before our arrival for it was he who oversaw the arrangements at this end, he who chartered our passage on the ship that brought us to England, sorted our documentation and hacked through all the red tape like an explorer in the undergrowth with a machete. We are still British citizens after all - well, that counts for my husband, our son and I but I’m not entirely certain how it works with Uncle Mjomba. I think a special licence was granted or something of that nature.
Anyway.
I am trying to select the best point at which to begin our story and I believe it might be the moment when we saw the house on Dedley’s well-to-do Edgar Street that was to be our new home for the first time.
Of course, in England people live a lot closer to each other than they do in the jungle. I was prepared for that but even so it was difficult to wear a genuine smile when Mr Lyons held open the garden gate and ushered me through it.
The dwelling was a semi-detached construction of brick and slate in the typical post-war style. I had seen hundreds like it before in my younger days and it seemed there was no shortage of them in Dedley. To share the building with another family divided only by a partition wall was going to be a new experience - to put it mildly. Come to that, the notion of living within walls at all was also a novelty with which we would all have to grapple. When you’ve spent most of your waking hours out in the open with only the canopy of trees for cover, the confinement of what is here considered ‘normal’ life seems alien and bizarre.
There were trees along the public street but none within the confines of the property’s perimeter fence, and how limited the space that fence contained!
Mr Lyons must have read the disappointment on my face because his own expression clouded over and he cleared his throat apologetically.
“There’s a lot of potential...” He was turning red. “You can do a lot with this garden and,” he made a gesture to a taller gate at the side of the house, “- it’s a lot bigger around the back.”
I walked up the path to the front door; the little stones of gravel tickled the bare soles of my feet. It took me six paces. My husband would take it one leap from garden gate to doorstep. My heart sank. He was still sleeping and so were my son and Uncle Mjomba. Mr Lyons followed my gaze back to the trailer hitched behind his car.
“I’m sure they’ll like it,” he offered his reassurance. “Once they get used to it. There’s always a period of adjustment - moving in - stands to reason - and coming from abroad, well... ”
I touched his arm. It shut him up.
“Mr Lyons,” I was perhaps a little too curt with him, “we have not just come from another country; we have left behind a very different way of life. Our habits and customs are vastly different to yours. I worry that the adjustment may not happen at all.”
He startled me by dangling something shiny and jangly before my eyes - I flinched and he laughed.
“Your keys,” he explained, pressing the objects into my hand. “You won’t get in without them.”
I have seen keys before - Of course I have - and I recognised their function and purpose at once but I have had no use for such things for two decades or so. I laughed. “Oh, we shall have no need of keys, Mr Lyons. We have Mjomba.”
Mr Lyons gave me a look that suggested he found me an amusing idiot. He reclaimed the bunch and held each key up in turn as he named them.
“Front door. Back door. Garden shed. Electric meter.”
I was taking none of it in. I merely smiled and pouted a little. I find this method very persuasive.
“Would you do the honours?” I may even have fluttered my eyelashes. Mr Lyons turned a different shade of red and blustered something about being happy to oblige. His fumbling of the key into the lock might have led one to believe he was as practised in their use as I. At last he pushed the door open with a triumphant exclamation but before we could step over the threshold, the air was rent by a ululating cry.
Mr Lyons froze in terror. I patted his arm again - my turn to offer reassurance.
“My husband,” I explained. “He’s awake.”
The neighbours’ curtains may have been twitching when I walked up the path but at this point they were opened wide as the doors at the rear of the trailer were flung apart and my husband - the most impressive figure of a man, I readily admit! - stepped from the vehicle and onto the road.
He’s a tall man, my husband, well over six feet and rather than having spent his formative years solely in the society of primates, has the appearance of having been raised from birth to adulthood by a community of gym instructors. Barefoot he stood - bare everything in fact, save for his loincloth - and sniffed the Dedley air. The concoction of traffic fumes and the body odour of so many thousands of people living in close proximity was not to his liking. I could tell, even from this distance just by the way he flared a nostril. To him the air was toxic. I hurried to his side and linked my arm in his. His face betrayed no distaste or emotion of any kind but the subtle jut of his square chin spoke volumes to me, his wife of almost twenty years. I reached up and stroked his long golden hair. Sometimes when he’s standing on a ridge or on some lofty limb and the setting sun catches him just right, his whole body seems to be made of gold.
He is worth more than that to me, of course.
I peered around him into the dark cavern of the trailer.
“Son sleep,” my husband’s deep voice rumbled behind his pectorals. “Mjomba sleep.”
It had been necessary to sedate my family in order for them to make the journey and only now were the tranquillisers beginning to wear off. They’ve done many brave things but all within the bounds of the jungle, you see. It was hoped that their introduction to the civilised world could be a gradual and easy one...
I patted his forearm and became aware that three females had appeared at the gate next to ours. The eldest was a frowning, sullen, middle-aged woman wearing eyeglasses and a string of pearls. The others were young girls - her daughters, I assumed. One was almost a young woman and the other about my son’s age. It is so difficult to tell when people keep themselves covered up with clothing. They were eyeing up my husband - as were the other occupants of the street, I have no doubt - but my own appearance was also attracting attention.
I make my own garments, you see, and tend to favour antelope hide for its softness and supple qualities. What I was wearing at the time was one of my more modest creations; there’s a word for it, I believe, and that word is ‘bikini’. Like my husband, I tend to go barefoot but I was sporting a decorative ankle bracelet fashioned from twine and lions’ teeth and I suppose that was catching their collective eye. Around my neck was a choker to match. The jewellery was made and given to me by my husband and are worth more to me than all the diamonds in Africa. Perhaps it was envy I could see in my neighbours’ wide eyes and twisted lips.
I heard one of them mutter, “Look at her hair!” so I shook my chestnut tresses for her benefit. I tend to let the prevailing wind be my stylist in Nature’s salon.
Mr Lyons seemed to rouse himself from some enchantment and, clearing his throat again, introduced us to the females.
“My wife Barbara and my daughters, Alison and Rebecca.”
Mr Lyons had mentioned he ha