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

off into new gales of mirth.
Jamie looked down and felt giddy. He needed to sit down. He was bigger than the monkeys, three times as big, but where the tree trunk forked, several branches had grown out sideways. They formed a flattish space that was big enough to provide a seat.
“Could you move along please?” he asked Tufts, who was still occupying the fork. Tufts obligingly hopped along a branch and Jamie moved gingerly along his own branch and settled himself in the space.
“What’s a human?” asked Snapper.
“Not a monkey,” observed Tufts. “Monkeys aren’t afraid of falling out of trees.
Why have you come?” she asked, turning to Jamie.
“I came to stop you fighting,” said Jamie, “and to find my phone. It went through the wall and opened up a window. What were you going to fight about?”
“Doesn’t matter now," said Snapper.
“Have another mango,” said Tufts.
“We’ll all have one,” said Snapper. “We’ll have a mango party!”
Snapper threw Jamie a mango, which he caught with one hand. “Good
catch! Your turn Tufts!” Snapper tossed another fruit up in the air, vaguely in the direction of Tufts, who missed it. Tufts tossed one back, and there followed a frenzy of mango-tossing, shouting, whooping and laughing. The monkeys skipped from branch to branch like wildfire, flashing yellow and orange. But they were hopeless at mango-catching and most of the fruit fell to the ground. Jamie saw other monkeys scrabbling for it and squabbling over it as it landed down below. Then Snapper and Tufts abruptly stopped the game and began instead to guzzle mango after mango, as if there were no tomorrow.
“You’ll run out of mangoes!” warned Jamie. The branches immediately around them had been totally stripped of fruit.
Snapper stopped eating, sank down beside Jamie in the tree fork, and turned suddenly purple. “That’s the trouble,” he said with a deep sigh. “The mangoes are running out. Soon there will be no mangoes left in the jungle.”
“Then we shall starve,” put in Tufts, who had gone a similar colour.
“So why-" began Jamie.
“-did we have a mango party?” finished Snapper. “Because we didn’t think. Monkeys do things first and think later. ”
“Shouldn’t you think first and then do things?”
“Of course not! That would be ridiculous!”
“We’d never get anything done!” agreed Tufts.
“Is that what humans do? Think first?”
“Er-” began Jamie, but he wasn't sure of the answer.
Snapper had lost interest anyway and was lying curled up on the flat space, yawning and turning a dark green colour. Jamie suddenly felt very tired too.
“Time for a nap,” said Tufts, settling down beside Snapper. “Lie down Human!” she said to Jamie. “Don’t humans sleep when they’re full up with mango?”
“He didn’t eat as much as us. Maybe he’s not tired,” said Snapper. “He isn’t dark green.”
“He doesn’t change on the outside,” Tufts reminded him. “But I think he’s pale blue inside.”
“What’s pale blue?” asked Jamie.
“Pale blue is scared,” was the answer.
“Scared is ridiculous,” snapped Snapper. “There’s nothing to be to be scared of.”
“Humans fall out of trees,” Tufts reminded him.
“Oh yes!” yelled Snapper gleefully. “Humans are rubbish in trees!”
“Worse than hippos!” agreed Tufts. “Imagine hippos climbing trees!”
Both monkeys found it necessary to turn yellow and roll about in merriment at this for a minute or so.
“Get in the middle!” Snapper ordered Jamie when he recovered himself. “A monkey each side will stop you falling. Lie down and go to sleep, Hippo!”
Jamie lay down between the two monkeys, and they each laid one arm and one leg across him. He still didn’t feel entirely safe. He was still a bit “pale blue inside".
“At least,” he thought to himself, “at least I’ve stopped the monkeys hurting each other.” It had been a bad day, an awful day, but at least he had done that, and now they seemed to be friends. It was good to feel their warm, furry bodies beside him, and he did feel very tired. Perhaps if they all went to sleep, when they woke up, the monkeys would have forgotten all about fighting. He laid his head down, but as he did so, it struck something hard and uncomfortable: his mobile phone!
Jamie had forgotten all about the phone, which had perhaps got stuck in some leaves and fallen out during the mango party. It reminded him of home. Would they be wondering where he was? He thought perhaps he should go back, instead of sleeping here with the monkeys. But he decided to let them go to sleep, to make sure everything was peaceful before he left. So he lay quietly between the two monkeys and examined his phone.
As he did so, he noticed something glinting in the fading sunlight. He was amazed to discover it was a button: a new one. He was quite sure it hadn't been there before. It was glinting because it had on it a tiny picture of a golden monkey.
Jamie pressed the button, and immediately the "window" he had come through from his bedroom, which was still open, closed. That was scary. Suppose it didn't open again? How would he find his way home? Jamie pressed the button again and, to his relief, the window re-opened. So that was how it worked! He left the window open and lay down again. He would wait till the monkeys had drifted off to sleep, and then leave.
But when he looked at Snapper, he saw that the monkey's eyes were still open. And it was then that Jamie made his mistake. “Why did you want to fight?” he asked Snapper.
As soon as the question was out he was sorry. Snapper was changing colour again.
“She was in the wrong tree,” he said, jabbing a finger at Tufts. “The trees on this side of the jungle belong to our family. The ones on the other side belong to hers. But these trees are spare trees.” Snapper was orange.
To make matters worse, Jamie thought he could faintly hear Dad calling him from the other side of the window.
Tufts was orange too. “Spare trees for everyone!" she asserted. “Anyone can use these trees!”
“Only in emergencies!” snapped back Snapper, now red.
“I was hungry!” retorted Tufts. “That’s an emergency!”
“Not enough of one!” Snapper was on his feet now, and a deep scarlet. “Every day!” he shouted. “Every day I see you in this tree! You have emergencies every day, do you? Get out!” he continued, “Get out of this tree and go back where you belong!”
Red as a post box, Tufts crouched, snarling.
“Jamie!” He heard his father’s voice louder now.
"I've got to go," he told the monkeys. "I'll come back later and try to help! Please don't fight again, please!" Jamie climbed up to the open window, and pushed his head through into his bedroom.
“I’ve made your tea,” Dad was calling from the kitchen.
“But the monkeys!" protested Jamie. “I think they might fight again!”
“No nonsense now! It’s going cold!” In a few seconds more Dad would come to get him. He gripped the bunk rail, pulled himself through the window, and jumped to the floor. He pressed the golden monkey button to close the window behind him.


3

War or peace?

Dad met Jamie in the hall. “Apologise to Ellie!” he ordered, before they entered the kitchen.
Ellie was sitting at the kitchen table. Violetta, Jamie’s stepmother, was serving up the food. “Sorry I pulled your hair,” mumbled Jamie as he passed Ellie and took his usual seat by the wall, opposite her. Ellie glared at him in silence.
“Fish and chips with mushy peas! Your favourite, Jamie!” Violetta was trying to be nice. She beamed at Jamie; but unfortunately, as she did so, she couldn’t help noticing his school shirt, sticky with mango juice and grimed by tree bark, the pocket slightly ripped. She couldn’t stop herself exclaiming “Oh, what state is shirt in Jamie!! And you teared pocket!” Violetta spoke English very well, but she came originally from Estonia and still had a strong accent. When she got excited, her grammar went awry. “Children in Estonia do not tear the clothes,” she continued. Violetta's parents had been very strict and she had always had to be very good when she was a child. So Violetta believed that all the children of Estonia were perfectly behaved, while English ones were spoilt and disobedient. Ellie, whose full name was Elena, had been born in Estonia, and come to England as a baby.
Jamie scowled. “He’s making a face!” said Ellie, but luckily no-one was listening.
The two adults joined the children at the table. It had somehow got pushed closer than usual to the wall and Jamie’s legs were squashed. The anger welled up inside him again. Why was there never enough room for him anywhere in this flat? He felt like shoving the table violently away from him, sending the plates and cutlery sliding, sloshing the water about, and probably winding Ellie. He clenched his teeth-and immediately heard the voice of Snapper, inside his head, saying: “Is that what humans do? Think first?” Well, Jamie had more sense than a bunch of monkeys. He wouldn’t have wasted a treeful of precious mangoes. “Think first” he said to himself. “Don’t shove the table. They’ll only send you off again without any tea and you’ll probably have to spend the whole weekend in bed.” Jamie didn’t shove the table, but it was very hard not to. He fidgeted around, trying to get comfortable.
“Sit still Jamie!” said Dad.
Jamie glowered. “How can I sit still, with a table digging into my knees?” he demanded crossly.
“That’s enough!” warned Dad. But he pulled the table out a little.
Violetta put a plate of food in front of Jamie, but Jamie didn’t much feel like eating. The sweet taste of mango in his mouth had taken his appetite away, and he was worried about Snapper and Tufts. He imagined them hurt and crying out in pain.
His father continued more kindly: “Listen Jamie. You can change bedrooms if you want. That bunk you’re in is too small, and there isn’t room for your stuff. You could sleep in the attic. Violetta’s OK with that, aren’t you, Vee?”
Ellie drew herself up straight at this, her eyes widening. She let out an indignant: “Huh!”, then her eyes narrowed again and she hunched over. She looked, Jamie thought, like a monkey ready to pounce.
The Hadfields lived in a flat on the top floor of an old house. They had a small kitchen, a lounge, bathroom and toilet, a medium–sized bedroom for Violetta and Ian, another for Ellie, and Jamie’s closet. Then there was the room inside the roof-space: the attic room. This was where Violetta did her sewing, making dancing outfits and wedding dresses for her customers. No child was allowed in there normally: the materials were too expensive and delicate. Jamie knew it would be an honour to be allowed to sleep in there.
“There’s room for a full-sized bed,” continued Dad “and I’ll put up some shelves.”
Jamie considered the idea. It would be good to stretch out properly in bed; but the best thing about sleeping in the attic was that it would make Ellie mad. He thought about saying 'yes' for just that reason. Jamie knew the arrangement wouldn’t work for long, though. Before any time at all he’d be in trouble for upsetting Vee’s pin tray, or getting grubby finger marks on the delicate fabrics. Besides, he needed to be near the jungle. He needed to get back there.
“I’m all right where I am,” he said. “Can