The Rainbows and the Secrets - Christine Cox (the snowy day read aloud TXT) 📗

and tidy in her school uniform. On this Monday morning it was quarter past eight before Vee noticed that her daughter hadn’t come into the kitchen for breakfast. She found her still in bed, and so deeply asleep that Vee had to shake her several times to wake her. Her eyes looked puffy, as if she’d been crying.
“Where am I?” Ellie said drowsily, and then, remembering Softpad and Snapper: “Oh no! Oh no!” She buried her face in her hands.
Her mother thought she was still fretting about the baby, and said (a little impatiently): “It is not as bad as all that, Ellie, that we think about having baby. Maybe it will not be yet. Maybe in year or two. Perhaps I can give up nursing home. Perhaps we can move to bigger place. Ian thinks so. There is not the hurry, after all.”
For a moment, Ellie forgot about the monkeys and tried to take this in.
“So you’re not pregnant then?” she asked, amazed.
“Of course not!” said Vee, equally amazed that her daughter had imagined this.
“But you said you wouldn’t be able to cope with the new baby if I wasn’t good.”
“That is baby we think about. We want to have one, and we talk about it, that is all. So you see, you do not need to worry so much. Now you must hurry to get ready for school.”
Ellie was stiff and sore and bruised from being dragged along the ledge, as well as sad, but somehow she managed to get ready for school. Vee gave her some toast to eat in the van while Ian drove her there. But Ellie had no appetite, and put the toast in a bin in the school playground. She sat at her desk going over and over in her head what had happened the night before. Sometimes she thought it was possible the two monkey leaders might be alive; and sometimes she was sure it wasn’t.
Jamie wouldn’t have been able to go to school, even if he hadn’t been suspended. The doctor had said he must stay off for two weeks because of his bang on the head. He was very tired too of course, and didn’t wake up till the middle of the morning. He padded around the flat in his pyjamas, heard Vee on her sewing machine up in the attic, and decided to go back to the jungle at once. It was dreadful to think the two monkeys might be dead. Jamie had to find out for sure what had happened to them.
He couldn’t get back to the hill top, because it wasn’t on the wall paper, so he went back to the bridge. He found it deserted. He started walking into the jungle on the Rainbows’ side, towards the place where Tufts’ family had its den, and as he came into a small clearing, he found a group of Rainbows. They were deep purple and unusually quiet, squatting on the ground. As Jamie approached, they raised their heads, and one of them came running over to him. It was Tufts. The monkey leapt up into Jamie’s arms.
“Snapper: is he...,” began Jamie, hardly daring to ask.
“Dead,” said Tufts sorrowfully. “Softpad too. Both dead.” The two of them buried their faces in each other’s shoulder and cried.
After a while Jamie put Tufts gently down, and sat miserably on the ground while the monkeys told how Francesco and Angelica, had gone searching and found the bodies of Snapper and Softpad at the bottom of the cliff.
“What did you do with them?” asked Jamie. “Don’t we need to bring them back?”
The monkeys shook their heads.
“We’ll leave them out in the open,” explained Tufts. “That’s what we always do when monkeys die.”
This idea seemed strange to Jamie. He was just trying to get his head round it when he heard a small thud, and a coconut dropped gently onto the ground in front of him. It was followed by another, then another. Jamie gasped. Secrets! On the Rainbows’ side of the jungle! More and more of the green monkeys came out of the trees and showed themselves. Each one dropped a coconut onto the growing pile.
The Rainbows watched them, shocking pink patches showing through their purple colour. There were about thirty Secrets altogether. They had been as silent as usual coming through the jungle, which was why no-one had noticed them till they were actually there.
“How did you get here?” Jamie asked.
“We walked round of course,” explained one of them. “Last night we didn’t go back to our dens. We stayed at the edge of the jungle. We were waiting for news from the parrots.”
“Then we heard that our leader is dead, and so is yours,” continued another. “We are sorry. We came to say that we are sorry. We went back to get coconuts, then we climbed up to the hill top again and walked round the river and came through your jungle to see you.”
“What about Shadow and Thrasher and One-eye?” asked one of the Rainbows sharply.
“Shadow and his friends have gone. We don’t know where they’ve gone, but they won’t be welcome in the Jungle ever again,” said the first Secret.
“Not while there are Secrets living in it,” added his companion. "Monkeys who behave like they did are not part of our tribe. Isn’t that right?” He turned to the crowd of Secrets around him, and they all shouted their agreement.
“We speak for all the Secrets,” said the first one. “We want to be friends. We are sad, like you, terribly, terribly sad, and we want to be friends. No more fighting again ever. And we are happy for you to share our coconuts.”
“We want to be friends too,” cried Tufts, turning to her fellow Rainbows, “don’t we, Rainbows?”
It was the Rainbows turn to shout their agreement. And then they jumped up, and turning bright yellow in spite of their sadness, just for a minute or so, embraced the Secrets and danced around with them.
When they had all settled down again, Tufts said: “Jamie, you and Ellie will help us, won't you? You'll help us make a proper bridge without a hole in the middle, and build a coconut store, as you promised?”
“Of course we will,” said Jamie. “But I have to go home now.” It was getting near lunchtime. He stood up.
There was something still bothering him though, and he was reluctant to leave without sorting it out. “Snapper and Softpad- shouldn’t we give them a funeral or something ?” he said.
The monkeys just looked at him blankly. They didn’t know what a funeral was.
“That is not what monkeys do,” squawked a voice above his head. It was Evangeline, perched on a tree branch. “But listen, Jamie. You don’t need to worry about Snapper and Softpad any more. They are with the Golden Monkey now, and they are happy.”
Back at home, as Jamie ate his lunch, he thought about the new friendship between the Rainbows and Secrets, and Evangeline’s words, and it made him feel a little better. He wanted to tell Ellie about it. He sent her a text message.
Ellie was not supposed to have a mobile phone with her in school. But that morning she’d sneaked it in with her. She was half-hoping, in spite of what Francesco had said, that Jamie might have some good news about the monkey leaders to pass on to her. She had set the phone on “vibrate”, and at that moment she was sitting on it, to hide it from her teacher, Mrs. Khan. The class was watching a history programme on television, but Ellie was too sad and too tired to concentrate. She folded her arms on the desk, laid her head on them, and within seconds she was fast asleep.
Ellie was woken by the phone vibrating under her bottom, making a banging noise against the wooden chair seat. The children nearby looked at her curiously, but luckily Mrs Khan had gone to the classroom door to talk to somebody, and didn't notice. Ellie pulled the phone out hastily and read the message, shielding it with her hands from prying eyes.
“Rnbws + Scrts frnds,” it read. “goin 2 share ccnuts. We must hlp wiv nu bridg etc. Snpr+Sftpd wiv Gldn Mnky. Parrot sez happy.”
Jamie had meant this message to make Ellie feel better, but it didn't. As soon as she read: "Snpr+Sftpd with Gldn Mnky,” she understood. It was just like when her grandmother in Estonia had died and her mother had told her Babushka had gone to heaven. Ellie covered her face with her hands and began to sob. She cried and cried and couldn’t stop.
Mrs Khan got the welfare assistant, Miss Smith to take Ellie to the sick bay. Miss Smith was young and pretty and kind. “What’s up Ellie?” she said.
All Ellie could think of to say was: “I had some bad dreams last night.”
“Tell me about them.”
So Ellie poured out the whole tale of Jamie and herself and the Rainbows and Secrets. “Well,” said Miss Smith, “that’s a very complicated dream. It sounds more like a film. Are you sure you haven’t been watching scary DVDs?”
Ellie shrugged. She wasn’t sure about anything anymore.
“Anyway,” continued Miss Smith, “I think it’s a beautiful story. You and Jamie were very clever and very brave to help the monkeys make friends and share the jungle.”
“But Snapper and Softpad died – they died rescuing me,” said Ellie. “And it was my fault. If I hadn’t taken the monkeys to the source of the river and shown them that all the Stories were the same, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“But you were right,” said Miss Smith. “All the Stories were the same, and the monkeys needed to know that. They needed to share the jungle, otherwise the fighting would have gone on and on, and some of the monkeys would have starved. You saved them, Ellie, you and Jamie. And it wasn’t your fault, what Shadow and his friends did. You weren’t to know that was going to happen.” She waited for this to sink in for a while, then asked: “Do you feel a bit better now?”
“A bit,” sniffed Ellie. “As soon as I get home, we can start painting a proper bridge for the monkeys. And we’re going to help them build a coconut store.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Miss Smith. “Why don’t you get some sleep now then?”
So Ellie slept till it was time to go home.


17

The "Proper Secrets"

Shadow, Thrasher and One-eye did find a small cave along that rocky ledge. And they did use it as a hiding place, after all. But it was themselves they had to hide in it, from monkeys who came by on their way to walk round the end of the river. Banished from the tribe, the three of them dared not show themselves in daylight.
One-eye also stayed in the cave to avoid seeing the cliff edge and remembering what they had done. He crouched in a dark corner muttering: "Shouldn't've done it, shouldn't've done it.!"
"Shut up, One-eye!" growled Shadow. He fixed the younger monkey with a threatening stare. “Listen!” he continued, “It’s good that those two idiot monkey leaders have gone. Snapper was a Rainbow, so he doesn’t matter anyhow –"
“Stupid Rainbow!” put in Thrasher.
“… and Softpad – Softpad called himself a Secret, but he was no true Secret at all! Softpad was a traitor! He wanted to change our Story. No true Secret would ever change our Story.”
“Traitor!” agreed Thrasher.
“But we,” continued Shadow proudly, "we are proper Secrets! We don’t need those other so-called Secrets. Who cares