Czytaj książkę: «AniMalcolm»
Copyright
First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2016
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
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Text © David Baddiel, 2016
Illustrations © Jim Field 2016
Jacket illustration © Jim Field, 2016
Jacket Design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
David Baddiel and Jim Field assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008185145
Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008191016
Version: 2018-08-23
To Pip, Tiger, Monkey, Ron and Chairman Meow
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part 1
Chapter One: Enormous furry ears
Chapter Two: 700 cats, 800 dogs and five giraffes
Chapter Three: Mini-coloured Munch Balls
Chapter Four: The Monkey Moment
Chapter Five: The last present
One Week Later
Chapter Six: We’re here!
Chapter Seven: Stinky Blinky
Chapter Eight: K-Pax
Part 2
Chapter Nine: Kind of green
Chapter Ten: Option C
Chapter Eleven: Benny and Bjorn
Chapter Twelve: A sudden chill
Chapter Thirteen: Manky lettuce
Chapter Fourteen: That’s porpoises
Chapter Fifteen: Hello M
Chapter Sixteen: Slurp slurp slurp
Chapter Seventeen: Catamanny story
Chapter Eighteen: So cat
Chapter Nineteen: Hey, boy
Chapter Twenty: The Dollys
Chapter Twenty-One: Goaty McGoatface
Chapter Twenty-Two: Blades at the ready
Chapter Twenty-Three: Run run run!
Chapter Twenty-Four: Brill poo
Chapter Twenty-Five: A lovely name
Chapter Twenty-Six: Bring me a manky apple
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Oh-so-clever pig
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Whaaaaaaaaarrggggghhh …!!
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Well …
Part 3
Chapter Thirty: Cute but sad and lost
Chapter Thirty-One: A horse, a piglet, two bigger pigs, three sheep, a cat and a dog
Chapter Thirty-Two: Memories
Chapter Thirty-Three: Mud
Chapter Thirty-Four: Lord King Louie’s precious pile of poop
Chapter Thirty-Five: Dominant male
Chapter Thirty-Six: Oh dear
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Splat
Chapter Thirty-Eight: A day over 148
Chapter Thirty-Nine: EIWKLTSH
Chapter Forty: Is this how it ends?
Chapter Forty-One: This army
Chapter Forty-Two: Ticky
Chapter Forty-Three: He’s Argentinian
Part 4
Chapter Forty-Four: Begins with M
Chapter Forty-Five: Free cheese
Chapter Forty-Six: Very, very faintly
Chapter Forty-Seven: Seventy-two hours
Chapter Forty-Eight: Here we go
Chapter Forty-Nine: COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO
Chapter Fifty: Where’s the chinchilla?
Chapter Fifty-One: Not normal circumstances
First Coda: One week later
Second Coda: One year later
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading
Books by David Baddiel
About the Publisher
“Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear … Maaaalllllcolm!”
Now, this is normally the moment at which the birthday child – whose name in this case (as you may have worked out) is Malcolm – would blow out the candles on their cake.
But the Baileys – that was his full name, Malcolm Bailey – had a family tradition, which was that they also sang ‘Happy Birthday’ when giving the children their birthday presents. So this song wasn’t being sung at a party, and it was not accompanied by a cake. It was just Malcolm’s mum and dad (Jackie and Stewart), his grandpa (Theo), his teenage sister (Libby) and his little brother (Bert), on the morning of his eleventh birthday, standing in a circle, in the living room, round a box, covered in wrapping paper (which actually did have printed candles on it).
Malcolm waited for the singing to finish. It was a bit of an annoying tradition, to be honest, because what he wanted to do was tear open that wrapping paper. Because he knew that inside the box was what he really, really wanted: a laptop computer.
He had given his parents the exact specification. An FZY Apache 321. Hi-Def screen. 4.0 GHz processor speed. Quad speakers with Nahimic virtual surround sound. The fastest and coolest and baddest laptop on the planet. He could almost see it in his hands, touch its LED display backlit keyboard.
“… Happy birthday
Toooo …
You!”
Smiling at his family, Malcolm reached over to pick up his present.
Finally, he thought.
“For … he’s a jolly good fellow!
For he’s a jolly good fellow!”
Malcolm leant back, away from the present, still smiling, but through gritted teeth. Do they normally do this bit? he thought.
“For he’s a jolly good fellow …
And so say all of us!”
“Great! Great singing, guys! Good job! Thanks!” said Malcolm, reaching forward for the present again.
“And … so say all of us!
And so say all of us!
For he’s a jolly good fe-eh-llowwww …
And …
So say all of us!!”
His mum and dad and grandpa and sister and brother harmonised – surprisingly well, actually – on the word us, making Malcolm think the song must, at last, be over. Not wishing to be disappointed again, he waited five seconds, in case it wasn’t. But everyone was just smiling. In fact, his mum was nodding, encouragingly, at the present.
Great, thought Malcolm. And tore open the wrapping.
Oh yes! That computer! With its shiny sleek aluminium cover! And its hyper-sensitive touch pad! And its enormous furry ears!
Malcolm frowned, screwing up his noticeably blue eyes. Its enormous furry ears …? He didn’t remember reading that specification when he was flicking through photos on BaddestComputer.Net.
But before he could quite work out what was going on, all the others were bending over and putting their faces very, very close to what was being revealed as the wrapping came off.
Which was not, in fact, a computer, or even a cardboard box containing a computer, but … a cage.
“Isn’t he the cutest thing?” his mum was saying.
“Look at that sweet face!” his dad was saying.
“OMG! I want to stroke him,” his sister was saying.
“I want to eat him!” his little brother was saying.
“He reminds me of Lord Kitchener!” his grandpa was saying.
“Sorry,” said Malcolm. “What is this?”
“Well, Malc …” said Jackie.
“Mum!”
“Sorry.”
“I’ve told you, Mum.”
Malcolm didn’t like being called Malc. He wasn’t sure why. Possibly because it rhymed with talc, and thus made him think of talcum powder, which was something he had once seen his grandpa putting down his pants.
“Sorry, M.”
That was what his mum, who liked to give her children nicknames, sometimes called him instead of Malc. Malcolm was all right with that.
“He’s a chinchilla,” she continued.
“And not just any chinchilla!” said Stewart. “He’s an Andean Lanigera!”
“Pardon?” said Malcolm.
“That’s the breed. It means he’s from the Andes, in South America. That’s the best type! The ones that make perfect pets!!”
Malcolm looked down at the little creature.
It was mainly white, with bits of speckled grey round its nose. It had round, sticky-out ears and a big fluffy tail. It was sitting up on its back legs looking up at him, hopefully.
The chinchilla, like Malcolm, had very blue eyes. Those blue eyes seemed to widen as they saw Malcolm, like the animal had realised, instinctively, exactly whose pet it was meant to be.
Malcolm looked back at the chinchilla.
It could have been a special moment. A moment when boy and chinchilla, chinchilla and boy, could really have bonded.
Time stretched, as blue eyes met blue eyes, through the bars of the little cage.
But then, Malcolm turned away, shaking his head and tutting.
“Right … OK …” he said. “So where’s … my Apache 321?!”
“Your what?” said Malcolm’s dad.
“My laptop that I asked for! I wrote it on my birthday list and everything!!”
“Sorry, Malcolm,” said his mum, “what birthday list?”
“The one I stuck up on the kitchen wall!”
“Oh …” said Malcolm’s sister, Libby, in her bored voice, which was the one she used most of the time, when not cooing over cute animals. “I think Ticky may have ripped that down a few days ago. When she was play-fighting with Tacky …”
“The cats ripped down my birthday list? So where is it now?”
“I think … Chewie may have eaten it …?” said his dad.
“The dog ate my birthday list?”
“Either the dog or the hamster.”
“Marvin wouldn’t eat that,” said Grandpa. “Would play havoc with his digestion.”
“Actually, I think I may have put it on the floor of the iguana’s cage. Sorry, Malc … olm,” said his mum. “Only I didn’t realise that’s what it was. I just thought it was some bits of paper. And you know how ’Nana likes to scratch around in bits of paper.”
“But …” said Malcolm, getting more and more frustrated, “… we’ve already got loads of animals! We’ve got two cats, a dog, a hamster and an iguana. Which most people would say is enough pets.”
“M!” said Jackie. “You can’t have enough pets.”
“Exactly! I agree!” said Stewart.
“Yeah. YOLO,” said Libby, who used a lot of these acronyms.
“Yes, siree!” said Grandpa Theo.
“I want to eat him!” said Bert.
Even the chinchilla seemed to nod, its enormous ears flapping up and down as it stared quizzically at Malcolm from inside its sparkling new cage, which had a water bottle attached to the outside, and a running wheel and a mirror inside.
“Right,” said Malcolm. “Let’s just look at that statement for a moment. You can’t have enough pets. So … if we had 700 cats, and 800 dogs, and five – I don’t know if you can keep them as pets, but I imagine if you could, you, Mum, would soon be off to the pet shop to get them – giraffes … would that be enough pets?”
“Well,” said Stewart. “As long as they were all house-trained.”
“I don’t think we could get a litter tray big enough for that many cats and dogs, Stewart,” said Jackie. “To say nothing of the giraffes.”
Grandpa frowned. “I wouldn’t like to see a giraffe use a litter tray, even if it was big enough.” He shook his head. “Bottoms too far off the ground.”
“TD,”1 said Libby.
“Hello?” said Malcolm. “Are we seriously discussing the pros and cons of getting 700 cats, 800 dogs and five giraffes now?”
But this question was never answered. Because the chinchilla – who later that day would be christened Chinny Reckon, by Stewart, after a funny phrase he used to say at school, in the 1970s – started running on the running wheel.
“OMGTT!”2 said Libby, crouching down next to the cage. “That’s soooooooooooo cute!!”
“Look at his little nose!” said Stewart.
“And his adorable enormous ears!” said Jackie.
“Actually, he doesn’t look much like Lord Kitchener …” said Grandpa Theo.
“I want to eat him!” said Bert.
Eleven-year-old Malcolm watched the chinchilla running in its wheel for a moment. The chinchilla looked back at him, but kept running, almost as if it wanted Malcolm to be impressed.
“Look!” said Jackie. “He loves you!”
Malcolm looked at his family, clucking and cooing over the new pet. A part of him wanted to join them, to be in that group hug round the cage. But another part of him couldn’t.
“Yes,” said Malcolm quietly. “Thing is, I don’t love him …” And, for extra emphasis (a bit like The Terminator, in one of Malcolm’s favourite films, does when he says Hasta la vista), he said it again, but in Spanish, a language he had just started to learn at school: “Yo no lo amo.”
As ever, when he tried to tell his family how he felt about animals, no one seemed to hear him. So he sighed and turned away, and walked down the hallway towards his bedroom, passing on his way the family’s two cats, Ticky and Tacky, their dog Chewie, their hamster Marvin and their iguana, Banana.
As it happened, someone in the living room had heard him. Someone with enormous ears; someone who could hear words even when they were said quietly. Someone who, when Malcolm said, “Yo no lo amo,” stopped running on his wheel, got off, and went and sat in the corner of the cage, facing the wall.
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