Code Name Bananas

Eric had dashed past animal after animal until he finally reached his best friend’s cage. To his sadness he saw Gertrude the gorilla squatting in the corner with her back to the crowd, rocking to and fro.

This was not right.

Something was very wrong.

The old girl was not her normal self at all. Usually she would delight in showing off to the crowd, getting up to all sorts of tricks, especially for a banana. Or two. Or three. Or as many as she could stuff in her gob at once. Which was a lot.

Gertrude’s favourite party tricks included:

The boy couldn’t bear seeing his friend looking so sad today. Last night’s bombing raid had clearly frightened the life out of her. The crowd gathered around her cage were muttering and moaning.

“I paid good money for this!”

“Fat lot of good that gorilla is!”

“What a waste of time!”

Eric couldn’t get through all the people, so he climbed up on top of a bench and shouted, “GERTRUDE!”

The moment the gorilla heard her friend’s voice, she stopped rocking and stood up. Then she leaped on to her rope and shimmied up with ease, using her hands and feet. Once at the top, she spotted the boy over the sea of heads.

“EEH-AAH!” she cried on seeing Eric. Despite it being ear-splittingly loud, you could tell it was a happy cry.

All those in the crowd looked around to spot who exactly this gorilla was so excited to see. Eric was painfully shy. Such was his embarrassment at being stared at that he blushed redder than a tomato.

Eric gave a little wave back to his friend. Then the crowd parted to let the boy go to the front.

Gertrude shimmied down the rope with ease and lolloped over to Eric. He put his hand up against the metal bars.

“Be careful!” came a shout from the crowd.

“Gorillas are dangerous!” came another.

“It will rip your arm off quicker than you can say Jack Sprat!” warned a third.

The gorilla followed the boy’s lead. Gently, she placed her hand up against the bars from the inside. Now the palms of their hands were just touching.

Eric smiled, and Gertrude smiled back. Seeing her big silly smile made him chuckle, and Gertrude hooted with laughter too.

“Ha! Ha!”

“HEE-HAW! HEE-HAW!”

Then the boy stuck his tongue out at her.

Then the gorilla stuck her tongue out at him!

There was a ripple of laughter through the crowd.

“HA! HA! HA!”

Hearing them, Eric felt flustered and took a step back.

“Go on, boy!” someone prompted.

“Don’t stop now!” urged another.

“This is worth the price of admission alone!” remarked a third.

The boy took a deep breath and tried to put all these strangers out of his mind. Summoning all his courage, he stepped towards the cage again. Gertrude smiled at him, her eyes twinkling. Eric smiled back. The gorilla’s smiles were infectious.

Today the boy was determined to try to go one further: to teach Gertrude a new trick. So Eric did something that always made him chuckle. He blew a raspberry.

“PFFT!”

There were tuts and murmurs of disapproval from some of the grown-ups.

“TUT!”

“TUT!”

“TUT!”

Clearly, they were unimpressed with his childish humour.

But the gorilla was not. Gertrude looked puzzled for a moment. Then she pursed her lips and blew, but no sound came out. Egging her on to try again, the boy slowly pursed his lips, pushed his tongue forward, and blew.

“PFFFFT!”

“TUT!”

“TUT!”

“TUT!”

Looking at Eric the entire time for encouragement, the gorilla copied him. Once again, she pursed her lips and pushed her tongue even further forward. This time, like a raspberry-blowing champion, Gertrude blew the loudest, longest raspberry the world had ever known.

“PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!”

SUCCESS!

Despite now having his face covered in gorilla spittle, the boy couldn’t help but laugh.

“HA! HA! HA!”

The stern-faced crowd began to chuckle too.

“HO! HO! HO!”

“Well played, boy!”

“The child is a marvel with animals!”

“This pair should be on the stage!”

Feeling ten-foot tall now, Eric was wondering if there was something else he could do? Could these raspberries be blown into something resembling a tune? There was only one way to find out.

The boy didn’t know many songs. One he often sang in school assembly and had, in fact, sung that very morning was “Rule, Britannia!”.

So, replaying the tune in his head, he began raspberrying* out the notes of the chorus.

“PFFFT! PFT! PFT! PFT!”

Eric then fell silent in the hope that Gertrude would follow his lead.

The gorilla tilted her head and looked at the boy as if he was barmy.

Undeterred by this, Eric persisted. The boy repeated himself.

“PFFFT! PFT! PFT! PFT!”

Gertrude tilted her head to the other side. Then a mischievous thought flashed across her eyes, and she pursed her lips together and pushed her tongue forward.

“PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!”

A long, low raspberry came out, once again covering the boy with gorilla spittle.

“Good luck with that one, lad!” snorted a voice from behind.

“Next you’ll be teaching it to play the piano!”

“Or dance for the Royal Ballet!”

“HA! HA! HA!”

Eric could sense people ebbing away, but he was sure it was worth one more try.

“PFFFT! PFT! PFT! PFT!”

This time the most wondrous thing happened. Gertrude joined in!

“PFFFT! PFT! PFT! PFT!”

This little boy and this great ape were blowing raspberries to the tune of “Rule, Britannia!”…

Eric kept eye contact with Gertrude and nodded his head so she would keep time. He was pretty sure that she didn’t know the song. Why would she? But she was picking it up very quickly.

“PFFFT! PFT! PFT! PFT!”

Soon, those that had shuffled away raced back to catch a glimpse of the show. More and more people joined, until there was a huge crowd gathered around the cage. Eric was concentrating so much on teaching the tune that he had managed to put them entirely out of his mind. Focusing on Gertrude, the pair reached the end of the chorus with one last big booming raspberry.

“PFFFFFFFFFFFFT!”

Instantly, the crowd broke into wild applause.

“MORE! MORE!”

“ENCORE!”

“PLAY US ANOTHER!”

The boy turned round. Because of the fuss, his face was now as red as a London bus.

“Well, I, er…”

Then at the back of the crowd he heard a voice. An angry voice. A voice he knew only too well… shouting his name.

“ERIC!”

* A real word that I have just made up. See your Walliamsictionary for the definition.

“ERIC!” the voice yelled again.

Now the boy blushed redder than a postbox.

The crowd looked around to see who this person was with the incredibly loud voice.

“Good afternoon, Grandma,” replied the boy weakly.

“Don’t you ‘good afternoon, Grandma’ me, boy! You are in almighty trouble! I ordered you to come straight home after school, but did you? Oh no! You had to come here to the zoo again, didn’t you?”

There was no answer to that.

Eric was BUSTED.

The old lady batted the crowd out of the way with her ear trumpet.

BISH!

“OW!”

BASH!

“OOF!”

BOSH!

“ARGH!”

“Look at you, child!” she exclaimed, spotting that her grandson was covered in gorilla spittle. “Your face is FILTHY!”

Then the old lady did something Eric and all the children of all the world LOATHE. She spat on her handkerchief and began furiously rubbing away at his face.

Now Eric was covered in granny spittle instead of gorilla spittle. The boy wasn’t sure which was worse.

As if that wasn’t punishment enough, Grandma yanked him by one of his sticky-out ears.

“COME WITH ME!” she demanded. “I bet this was all your Uncle Sid’s idea! That man is always filling your head with silly ideas!”

“Uncle Sid had nothing to do with it!” lied Eric.

“What did you say?” demanded the old lady, cupping the ear trumpet to her ear.

“UNCLE SID HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!”

Grandma stared at the boy. “Bread and dripping!” she barked. “I bet there’s another bombing raid tonight as soon as it’s dark, which,” she said, looking up at the sky, “is any moment now!”

With her free hand, Grandma hacked through the crowd with her ear trumpet as if it were a machete slashing through the jungle.

BISH!

“OUCH!”

BASH!

“ARF!”

BOSH!

“NOT AGAIN!”

Such was the commotion that more and more people began to gather: visitors, zookeepers and a stiff-looking man who was immaculately dressed in a morning suit complete with top hat. He tried to weave his way through the crowds.

“Please! Please! Some decowum, please!” he exclaimed. His voice was so achingly posh that his “r”s came out as “w”s. “Calm down, madam, please!”

“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” she shouted.

“I SAID ‘CALM DOWN’!”

“All right! All right! No need to shout.”

“Are you a little hard of heawing, madam?” asked the man, spotting the ear trumpet.

“A quarter past five,” replied Grandma, checking her watch. “Who are you, anyway?” she added, putting the trumpet to her ear.

The man was taken aback by her tone. He spoke directly into the end of the trumpet. “I am Sir Fwedewick Fwown!”

“Fwedewick!” the old lady scoffed. “What kind of a name is that?”

“Fwedewick! It is a perfectly normal name for a gentleman.”

“I think it’s Frederick,” hissed Eric, still wincing from the pain of having his ear pulled. “He runs the zoo.”

“You are wight, boy. Fwedewick! And I am the zoo’s diwector genewal!”

“The what?” she demanded.

“Diwector genewal!”

“Diwector genewal? What is a diwector genewal?”

“He is the director general, Grandma,” said Eric.

“How many times do you need to be told?” bawled Frown. “Diwector genewal!”

“THERE’S NO NEED TO SHOUT, DEAR!” she shouted.

“I must politely ask you to leave the pwemises!”

“The pwemises?” she asked.

“Yes! The pwemises. With haste!”

“Don’t you worry – we’re going!” The lady marched off. On each of her steps, Gertrude blew a raspberry…

“PFT! PFT! PFT!”

…making it seem like the old lady was blowing off.

The crowd roared with laughter.

“HA! HA! HA!”

“Oh! My goodness gwacious!” exclaimed Sir Frederick. “Who taught my gowilla to do that? Was it you, big-eared boy?” he barked, nose to nose with Eric.

“Yes, sir,” he confessed. “I was just trying to cheer up my friend after all the bombing last night. She was rocking backwards and forwards, and I was worried about her.”

“So you taught her how to blow a waspbewy?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the boy sorrowfully.

“This is a zoo! Not a circus!” thundered Frown.

“I couldn’t agree more!” snapped Grandma. “You need to have a talk with the boy’s great-uncle. He works here at the zoo. Sidney Pratt!”

“PWATT?”

“NO! PRATT!”

Grandma had dropped the zookeeper in a massive pile of elephant doo. Which, by a staggering coincidence, is exactly where Sid already was. However, Eric could hear that familiar clinking, clanking and clunking of the old man’s tin legs in the distance.

CLINK! CLANK! CLUNK!

On spotting Sid, the boy shook his head as if to say, “Run!” Sadly, running was not the old man’s strong point.

“Do you know this boy, Pwatt?” demanded Frown.

Eric shook his head.

“No?” lied the man.

“He’s your great-nephew, Sidney!” exclaimed Grandma. “I knew you were daft, but I didn’t know you were this daft!”

“Oh, yes, I do, then,” said Sid.

“Yes or no?” pressed Frown.

“A bit of both. No, I didn’t know him, before he was born. But now I do, yes.”

“I tell my grandson time and time again there’s a war on! It’s not safe! He needs to come straight home from school!” began Grandma. “But oh no! Sidney Pratt has other ideas! Wants the boy to be a zookeeper just like him! Shovelling doodahs all day! I bet he even sneaks the boy in here for free!”

Frown frowned. “Fwee? FWEE! Is this twue?”

Sid looked at Eric. The boy shook his head again, but the old man knew the game was up.

“Yes. It is twue, I mean true. My little Eric loves the animals, you see, and they love him…”

“Sidney Pwatt, wait for me in my office! You two, leave the zoo wight now.”

“YOU WHAT?” barked Grandma, pushing the trumpet closer to her ear.

“LEAVE!”

“THERE’S NO NEED TO SHOUT! And don’t worry! We’re going! I wouldn’t come back into this stinky old place if you paid me!” huffed Grandma, yanking Eric’s sticky-out ear. She’d made it stick out even further.

“OW!” exclaimed Eric as he was hauled away. He stole a look back at Sid, and then at Gertrude. The gorilla was sitting in her cage, having watched the entire scene. Although she couldn’t speak human, Gertrude had clearly understood much of what had happened.

The boy was sad, so she was sad too.

The gorilla put her hand up to the cage. It was clear she didn’t want her friend to go.

“HEE-HAW!” she cried after him, offering a little wave goodbye. Eric waved back, just before he was hauled off out of

sight

by his

ear.

“OWWW!”

“STRAIGHT TO BED!” announced Grandma as she loomed over Eric at the kitchen table of her little terraced house. “Do you hear me? STRAIGHT TO BED!”

There was no chance of the boy not hearing her. She spoke so very loudly. “Straight to bed with no tea!”

“But—!”

“NO BUTS! YOU HAVE BEEN A VERY BAD BOY!”

Eric rose from the rickety chair and stomped up the stairs.

STOMP!

STOMP!

STOMP!

The first door was that of the tiny, dark, damp box room. It was full of Grandma’s old junk, but was now Eric’s bedroom. Feeling sorry for himself, he lay down on the bed, not even bothering to take off his school uniform. He closed his eyes. Holding on to the pillows, he imagined he was in the middle of a lovely family cuddle.

A muddle.

His dad had been killed six months before, during that summer at Dunkirk. Dad was one of thousands of British soldiers retreating from the Nazis across France. Dunkirk is the town on the northern coast of France from which the troops were being evacuated. However, many were killed as they tried to escape.

Including Private George Grout.

Dad had been a plumber – that’s how he’d met his wife. He’d called round when her outside toilet was blocked. When war was declared in 1939, Dad proudly signed up to join the army. He was determined to do his bit to keep Britain safe from a Nazi invasion. However, his war would not be a long one. After surviving a number of fierce battles in France, tragedy struck at Dunkirk. The ship on which he was being evacuated, HMS Grafton, was torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat (or submarine).

Eric’s mum was devastated when she received the telegram. Her darling husband was gone. She wept and wept and wept. Eric feared she might drown in her own tears, just as so many soldiers had drowned at Dunkirk. It was scary seeing his mum so sad. Would life ever feel normal again? Strangely there were still normal things to do, like eat your breakfast, brush your teeth or do your homework. After her husband’s death, Mum was more determined than ever to help with Britain’s war effort. She worked at a factory sewing parachutes for Spitfire pilots. However, tragedy was to strike Eric’s short life again when a Nazi bomb destroyed the factory during a night shift.

No one got out alive.

One moment Mum was there, and the next she was gone. Just like with his dad, Eric didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye. Nothing felt real to the boy any more. It was as if he were in a dream or, rather, a nightmare, where he was trapped underwater, and if he cried out nobody could hear him.

Now the boy was an orphan, it was hastily decided that Eric should go to live with his grandmother. The problem was that Grandma wasn’t good with children.

Up there in the tiny box room of her house, Eric nestled himself between the two pillows on his bed. He dreamed they were his mum and dad. The pillows were cold and damp. Still, he shut his eyes. Maybe, just maybe, if he concentrated hard enough, he would find himself back in a perfect family muddle.

His daydream ended as the door swung open.

SWONK!

“I brought you some bread and dripping,” announced Grandma.

Eric hadn’t been expecting her, and hastily sat up on the bed, pushing the pillows to one side. He felt silly that the old lady might see him like this.

“Oh, thank you, Grandma,” he chirped. He liked bread and dripping. Dripping was the fat from cooked meat, and it was tasty if you spread it on bread. He wolfed it down as the old lady perched next to him.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you, Eric,” she said. “This war is hard. I lost a son; you lost a father. And, of course, you lost your mother too. I just couldn’t bear it if any harm came to you.”

“I understand, Grandma,” he spluttered, his mouth full of food. As Eric spoke, he sprayed breadcrumbs all over the floor. This made them both chuckle.

“Ha! Ha!”

Chuckling was not something they did much of together.

“You can have those crumbs in the morning for your breakfast!” said the old lady.

Eric wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.

“Now, as soon as you finish your tea, I want you to go straight to sleep. We barely got a wink last night down in the underground.”

The boy yawned. Grandma was right.

“And you need to be bright and breezy for school in the morning!”

Eric nodded weakly. Bright and breezy was never something he ever felt at school.

“Goodnight, Grandma.”

“Porridge.”

“NO, I SAID ‘GOODNIGHT’!”

“NO NEED TO SHOUT, DEAR!”

“Goodnight, Grandma.”

“Goodnight, boy.”

The old lady wasn’t one for hugs and kisses so she tapped the boy on the head as you might a pet instead.

TAP! TAP!

With that, she stood up and left the room, closing the door behind her.

SWONK!

Eric walked over to the grimy little window and looked up at the sky. It was dark and quiet right now. Eerily so.

Would the Nazi bombers return tonight?

There had been night after night of raids on London. So much so that it even had a name. The newspapers called it “the Blitz”, after the German word for “lightning”. Adolf Hitler’s plan was to force Britain to surrender to the Nazis.

As Eric gazed across the frosted rooftops of London, his thoughts turned to Gertrude. The Nazi bombers were sure to strike again this evening. The gorilla had been left deeply distressed by last night’s bombing raid. In his heart, Eric felt a deep longing to be with her. If he was by her side tonight, he was sure he could make things all right.

So the boy took a deep breath and summoned up all his courage. Then he slid open the window.

SHUNT!

Next, remembering exactly how Gertrude slid down her rope, he shimmied down the drainpipe. Then Eric ran off through the dark and empty streets of London.

London Zoo was set in Regent’s Park, one of the grandest outdoor spaces in the city. The park was closed at night, so Eric had to climb over the railings. Once inside, he circled the outer fence of the zoo for a while, searching for a way in. Ahead, he spotted a tall tree in the park, the branches of which drooped over into the zoo. Thinking again about how Gertrude would climb it, he scaled the tree trunk, using his hands and feet, just like the gorilla did. From the tree trunk, the boy shimmied across one of the branches on his bottom. But, as he scrambled further away from the trunk the branch thinned, and the inevitable happened.

CRACK!

The branch snapped!

Eric found himself tumbling through the air.

WHOOSH!

“ARGH!”

SPLOSH!