Chapter 1 - Jamie in trouble again
It was a brilliant puppet show, but
it was spoilt for Jamie. Punch was
doing something violent to Judy, or
the baby, or the policeman; Jamie
couldn’t see. As usual they’d put him
on the back row, and the boy in front,
who’d been fidgeting all the way
through the show, was now standing
on the bench blocking Jamie’s view.
Jamie put his hands on the boy’s
shoulders and pushed downwards.
The boy toppled off his perch and fell
onto the shrieking children on the
bench in front of him, banging his
knee and howling with exaggerated
pain.
Jamie saw Mr Buxton heading in
his direction. Two rows in front he
saw the long blond hair of his nine-year-
old stepsister Ellie, pinned back
with that stupid slide with the pink
glittery hearts she was so proud of.
He watched Ellie’s hand go up. He
heard Ellie say: “It was Jamie, sir.”
(How did she know? Did the slide
have eyes in it?)
Jamie felt himself being propelled
out of the school hall and along the
corridor to the Head’s room. The
Head wasn’t there, so Jamie had to
stand in the secretary’s room till she
came back. The secretary glared at
Jamie and telephoned his father. “I’m
sorry Mr Hadfield,” he heard her say,
“...yes, in trouble again...Mrs Gupta
will want to see you-can you come in
at 3.15?”
Dad and the Head arrived at the
same time: he heard their voices in
the corridor, talking about him. “It’s
the second time this week he’s been in
trouble,” the Head was saying. “I shall
have to suspend him.”
As they passed through the secretary’s
office to the Head’s room, Mrs
Gupta looked crossly at Jamie, and
beckoned him to follow. His father
looked sad and hopeless. Ellie had
tagged along behind, and was waiting
in the corridor. She looked smug.
Mrs Gupta asked Jamie why he’d
pushed the boy off the bench.
“Don’t know,” replied Jamie. He
didn’t bother to explain that he hadn’t
meant to push the boy off the bench,
only to get him to crouch down so
Jamie could see. Nor did he mention
that the boy had been a nuisance all
afternoon, squirming about, leaning
against Jamie’s knees, and getting out
of his seat.
No-one ever listened when Jamie
explained things. They seemed to
think everything was his fault because
of his size. He was the biggest boy in
the school, in spite of being nine, and
two years younger than the Year Sixes.
It didn’t matter who he complained to
when other children teased him: Mr
Buxton, or Mrs Gupta, or Dad. Whoever
it was would always say, with disbelief:
“They picked on you? But you’re the
biggest boy in the school, Jamie!”
Jamie was suspended from school
for three days.
“You’re the biggest boy in the school,
Jamie,” said his father as they walked
to the van, “and the worst behaved. Do
you realise how many times Mrs Gupta
has sent for me this term?”
“It’s four,” said Ellie immediately.
“Is not,” said Jamie.
“Is!” said Ellie. “The first time,
you hit someone with a ruler in class.
The second time you threw a girl’s
sandwich on the floor and trod on it-“
“She spat in my lunchbox!”
“Says you! The third time-”
“Shut up!” yelled Jamie, grabbing
a bunch of her long blond hair in each
hand and yanking it hard. “Shut up!
Shut up! Shut up!”
Ellie was screaming. Dad took
Jamie’s arms in a vice-like grip and
Jamie dropped the hair. Ellie ran
sobbing to the van. Dad turned Jamie
round to face him, still holding his
arms. His father stared at him.
“What is it with you Jamie?” he
said. “Are you mad?”
“Mad Jamie! Bad Mad Jamie! Mad
Bad Jamie!” called two giggling girls
from his class as he climbed into the
back of the van, where Dad made him
sit among the pipes and toilet bowls
and wash basins, while Ellie travelled
in the front.
“No television for you tonight,” Dad
told him.
On the way home, Dad bought Ellie
an ice-cream, to make up for having
her hair pulled.
At home, Jamie lay on the captain’s
bed in what he called his “cupboard”.
This was an exaggeration, but his
bedroom wasn’t much bigger than
a walk-in closet. The captain’s bed
consisted of a top bunk, with some
shelves and drawers underneath
instead of a bottom bunk. It took up
the whole of one of the longer walls.
The opposite wall was only three-quarters
of a metre away, so there was
just room for a bunk ladder, and for
Jamie to get in and out of bed, but for
no other furniture. On one end wall of
the narrow room was a small window;
on the other, a sliding door, because
there wasn’t enough space for an
ordinary door to open. The bunk was
too short for him and as he lay on his
front, his feet stuck out uncomfortably
over the end rail. From the lounge
came the sound of Ellie laughing at
the television.
Jamie took out the mobile phone
Dad had given him a few days earlier,
for his birthday. He wondered where
his mother was, and how surprised she
would be if she had a phone call from
her son. Maybe she would be overcome
with joy and rush over from the other
side of the world and take him back to
live with her. Or maybe she had twelve
other children now and would say: “It’s
lovely to talk to you Jamie but I’ve got
my hands full at the moment. Call me
back in ten years.” Jamie didn’t have
her phone number.
He dialled his grandparents’
number instead. He heard Gran’s voice
on the answerphone say; “Sorry, we
can’t come to the phone just now...,”
and remembered they were on holiday
abroad somewhere. There was no-one
to phone. What was the use of a phone
if you had no-one to talk to? He banged
the back of the phone against the
metal end-bar of the bunk. How many
bangs would it take for the screen to
break? Jamie banged it again harder,
then a third time, harder still. The
screen was still unbroken. He stopped
because it was too noisy. If he carried
on banging some-one would come to
see what was happening. Risking one
last noise, he threw the phone at the
wall opposite his bed, expecting it to
bounce off and hit the floor with a
clatter. No clatter came. The phone
sailed through the wall and landed
with a faint thud, somewhere beyond
it. Jamie stared. The phone had gone
through the wall.
The paper on this wall showed
monkeys of many different colours
– all the colours of the rainbow in fact, sitting
in trees, eating, or swinging from
one tree to the next. Multi-coloured
parrots flew here and there, and near
the floor some blue hippos basked on a
muddy bank. It was different from the
wall against which his bed rested. On
that wall, although the hippos were
similar, the trees were different and
the parrots were just plain green. The
monkeys were a dull green colour too,
and so hidden in the trees that you
had to look hard to see them. Jamie
had often wondered why the two walls
were different.
As he stared, he noticed a red
monkey, right opposite him. He was
surprised to see that the red monkey
looked the way he, Jamie, felt: angry.
It was staring at something, frowning
and baring its teeth. It was a comfort
to Jamie that someone else seemed to
feel as angry as he did. Jamie liked this
monkey.
The next thing that happened was
stranger still. As Jamie was observing
the monkey, the monkey shifted its
gaze, and looked straight at Jamie.
“What are you staring at?” it snapped.
Jamie gasped. “I was looking for
my phone and - and you’re angry like
me,” he started to explain, “I was just
wondering why...Anyhow,” he added,
getting his breath back, “why shouldn’t
I stare at you if I want to? You’re on
my wallpaper!”
Before the monkey could reply there
was a sudden noise of rustling leaves
and creaking branches, and an orange
shape flashed by. The orange monkey
– for that was what it was – landed on
the branch of a mango tree, grabbed a
fruit and began to gobble it greedily.
As it did so, Jamie heard a snarl, and
saw the red monkey launch itself from
its perch, hurtle through the air and
land with such force on the same
mango branch that several fruits fell
to the ground. It continued to shake
the branch violently, as if to shake
the orange monkey off it, snarling the
while. The orange monkey retreated to
a fork in the tree trunk, still clutching
the mango. Once there, to Jamie’s
further amazement, it turned as red
as its opponent, snarled back and
crouched ready to pounce.
The monkeys were going to hurt
each other. Jamie had to stop them.
He knelt on the bunk, stretched out
his arms and grasped something solid
that felt like a tree branch. It seemed
as if a window had opened in the wall.
He pushed his head through, and
pulled the rest of him after it. It wasn’t
a very big window: he had to wriggle
and squirm his way through. Then
suddenly he was on the other side,
hanging by his arms from a tree, his
feet dangling. He felt anxiously around
for a foothold, and found one.
He was in a tree, standing on one
branch and holding on to another. The
two red monkeys were either side of
him: only now they were no longer red,
but shocking pink. The air felt hot and
damp, and his ears were filled with the
squawking of parrots, the screeches of
monkeys, the buzzing of insects, the
rustling of leaves and the creaking of
branches, as the tree swayed
alarmingly in the wind. The ground was a
dizzyingly long way below…..
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