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

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

www.harpercollins.co.uk

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.

Malcolm lay back on his bed, looking out on to the street.3 He could still, faintly, hear the sound of his family making cute noises round the cage – now added to by the click-click-click of his sister’s phone, which meant that she was taking selfies, pouting, with the chinchilla in the background. He could also hear other, very tinny, animal noises, so he assumed that Bert must have got hold of his dad’s phone. Malcolm’s family did not have much money:4 his mum worked as a receptionist at the local vet’s, and his dad designed apps, none of which had been very successful.

The only one that had got on to the Apple Store was called AnimalSFX, which was one where you pressed on some cartoon animals and it would make the sounds of those animals. No one really played with it any more, except Bert – which meant that along with all the other animal noises in the house, Malcolm could also hear an artificially created donkey, cow and elephant. This just made him more depressed.

He wondered why his family never got the message about him and animals. After all, he thought, looking round the room, his walls were the only ones in the house that didn’t have animal pictures on them. Libby’s and Bert’s bedrooms were covered in cute images of kittens and puppies and seals and bears and penguins and – y’know: all the animals. His parents’ bedroom didn’t have animal posters on the wall, but they did have lots of family photographs, and every family photograph included the pets. Even Grandpa’s room had a painting in it of some dogs playing poker.

Malcolm felt quite bad about it. He knew kids were supposed to like animals. He knew people were supposed to like animals. He knew that not liking animals generally made other people think that you were a bad person.

And, anyway, he didn’t not like animals, really. He just didn’t really get animals. Most of them seemed to lie around eating and sleeping and not doing anything useful.5 He had watched Ticky and Tacky (or possibly Tacky and Ticky – even though one was mainly brown and one was mainly white, Malcolm was always unsure which was which) for long periods of time and had never seen them, for example, read a book, or make a cake, or design a fantastic computer, or do any of the things he was interested in. Even now as he looked out of the window, he could see some pigeons in the street doing that stupid pigeon thing of hanging around in the middle of the road waiting until the last moment of a car approaching before flying away. Why did they do that?

But because his family so liked animals, and had so many animals, and went on so much about animals, sometimes – like now – he felt like he really did not like animals. He sometimes wondered, in fact, if his mum and dad preferred animals to children; or at least to him, their one child who wasn’t obsessed with animals.

At those moments, he sometimes felt like he hated animals. He didn’t like to admit that, but he knew that at those moments it was true.

There was a knock on the door.

Malcolm didn’t answer.

“Malc,” came his mum’s voice, from behind the door.

“Mum!” he said.

“Sorry, M! Are you OK? Are you asleep?”

“Clearly not,” replied Malcolm.

“That makes a change,” she said.

“Can we come in?” said Stewart.

“Is the chinchilla with you?”

Malcolm heard some whispers, some scuttling and the sound of a cage door being locked.

“No …” said Stewart, eventually.

“OK,” said Malcolm.

The door opened and his family shuffled in, holding out, like peace offerings, Malcolm’s other presents.6

Malcolm, immediately forgiving them for the chinchilla, greedily opened them.

They were:

  Caring For a Chinchilla: A Guide

 Chinchilla Treats, 5 kg

 Mini-coloured Munch Balls (for chinchillas). Five of them, all different colours

Controlling himself – quite well, at first – Malcolm looked up from these presents and said: “Thanks. No, really: thanks. I really appreciate it. Um … anything … not to do with chinchillas?”

Jackie and Stewart exchanged glances.

“Um … of course!” said Stewart, handing over another present. Malcolm unwrapped it, suspiciously. Then held up what was inside and looked at his parents.

“It’s a chinchilla,” he said. “A cuddly toy chinchilla.”

“No …” said Jackie. “I’d say it’s a … rabbit. Wouldn’t you, Dad?”

“Yes! Or maybe … a … a … big-eared hamster!”

“Right, yes. A big-eared hamster. Maybe we should call it … um …”

“Hammy Big-Ears!” said Stewart.

“LOLTT …”7 said Libby.

“Exactly!” said Jackie. “Hello, Hammy Big-Ears! Look at your cute … big … hamster ears!”

“Right,” said Malcolm. “So when you bought this cuddly toy, you weren’t sure what kind of animal it was meant to be? It had no label of any kind? It wasn’t in any particular section of the cuddly toy shop? Perhaps the CH section? Just after Cheetahs and Chimpanzees?”

“Can I eat it?” said Bert.

“I think that clinches it,” said Malcolm, tossing the toy to Bert. “It’s a chinchilla.”

And, with that, he lay back on his bed, with his arms crossed, looking up at the ceiling. “Mum, Dad,” whispered Libby. “You know why Malcolm’s like this, DC?”8 She lowered her voice to an even lower whisper, made lower still because of her bored voice, which was like someone speaking through a yawn. “It’s cos of the Monkey Moment. IKEA …”9

“No, it’s not,” said Malcolm. The whisper had clearly not been whispery enough.

Jackie and Stewart exchanged glances. “It probably is, isn’t it, Stewart?” Jackie whispered.

“Yes, darling, I think we all know it is …” Stewart whispered back. “I think because of the …”

“… Monkey Moment,” said Jackie.

“Yes, the Monkey Moment … Perhaps Malcolm still feels a bit traumatised around furry creatures …”

“The whispers aren’t working!” said Malcolm. “I can hear you! It’s a small room! And: it’s got nothing to do with the Monkey Moment! Stop saying the words ‘Monkey Moment’!”

“What ‘Monkey Moment’?” said Grandpa.

“Oh, Dad! We’ve told you a hundred times!” said Jackie.

“Tell me again,” said Grandpa. “You know how I forget things.”

Malcolm sighed, and looked out of the window at a pigeon flying away from a car bumper at the last second.

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