I cried a lot when I told her these things. I think she understood about death, and about grief too. “You know when I’m really sad and down in the dumps, Oona, don’t you? I don’t talk to you then, do I? That’s because I’m crying inside, and you can’t talk when you’re crying. When I’m like that I don’t care whether I live or die. But I have to care, don’t I? Because if you don’t, you just give up and die. So that’s why I have to keep telling myself, and telling you, that I’ve got you instead. You’re my family now, Oona. My home isn’t Salisbury any more, or down on the farm with Grandpa and Grandma in Devon. It’s here in the jungle with you. Wherever you take me, that’ll be my home. Wherever you go, I’ll go. And I won’t mind where that is, honest, just so long as you feed me lots of figs, and just so long as you don’t ever leave me. You and me, Oona, we’ve got to stick together, right? Promise? Love you, Oona.” That’s more or less how I’d ramble on to her.
Above all I always wanted to remind her that I loved her. I’d try to remember to tell her that last thing at night before I went off to sleep. Mum had always told me the same thing at bedtime; Dad too, when he was home. I always loved them saying it. And now it comforted me to be saying it to Oona each night, helped me to put the past behind me, and to come to terms with my new life in the jungle with Oona.
Of course I didn’t expect any kind of response from her to anything I’d said. I did think sometimes, that an occasional, ‘Love you too,’ would have been nice. But it never happened. There was one time though, when she did reply, in a sort of a way, in a most surprising way actually. I’d just said my ‘goodnight, love you’, when she let out one of the longest, loudest farts I had ever heard in all my life. I’d known her long enough by now to know she was a frequent farter, but this particular one was truly the most magnificent fart of all farts, and musical too, one that seemed to go on and on interminably. I could hear my own giggling echoing through the trees long after I’d finished. I remember I’d always giggled with Bart and Tonk and Charlie when someone let off in school assembly, even when we knew we’d get into trouble with Big Mac. I don’t know why, but when it came to farts I was a helpless giggler, I could never stop myself. Now out here in the jungle there was no need to stop myself, no Big Mac to keep me in at playtime.
There wasn’t any real need to stop myself either when my laughter turned to tears, as it so often had done since I’d been in the jungle with Oona. I could tell it upset her when I cried, so I did my best not to. I promised her so often that I wouldn’t cry again, but it was a promise I was still struggling to keep. I went on promising her all the same, because I knew that one day if I promised it often enough, it would help me to make it happen. “I’m not going to cry, Oona.” I’d hold her trunk between my hands, close my eyes, and tell her yet again. “I’m not going to think of them. I mean it this time. I really mean it. I promise. I promise. I promise.”
Every night during those early times with Oona, I tried to keep that promise, and there were many nights when I failed. There were no weeks and months for me any more, not in this place, only days, and the long long nights. Whenever I saw a glimpse of the moon through the trees above, I’d think about where I’d seen it before, through the window at home, out camping with Dad. It was these nights I hated most, for it was then that, however much I tried, the old griefs would come welling up inside me again. All I could do then was give myself up to tears. In some strange way though, I found the discomfort of having to sleep rough in the jungle each night did help to distract me from the sadnesses I was trying so hard to forget. In the first place, I had to concentrate all my mind on making myself comfortable, on collecting and piling up a bed of leaves to lie on, always close enough to Oona, but not so close that I’d have to share her flies.
I had learned from bitter experience by now that the damp of the ant-infested, leech-infested forest floor was no place to spend a night. So I did spend a lot of time and trouble every night making myself a substantial nest of leaves, preferably off the damp of the forest floor, on some nearby rock if possible. But even so, I could never get to sleep easily. I couldn’t forget the jungle around me, what dangers might be lurking, even though Oona was right there nearby to protect me.
But on some nights all these fears, and even my grief, were dwarfed by the constant battle I fought with the insects that came alive in the dark, and whirled and hummed and buzzed about me. However much I slapped and swiped at them, they just kept on coming back to have another go at me. Sooner or later, I knew, despite all my best efforts to make my bed inaccessible to ants and leeches, they would find me out, creep up my legs and feed on me whether I was awake or asleep.
And then there was the din.
I should have been used by now to the sounds of the jungle at night, but the howling and screeching and hooting, all the endless racket of crickets and frogs would not let me sleep. Lying there, I often longed for the silence of the nights on the farm in Devon, when I’d been camping out with Dad. There I might have heard the occasional bark of a distant fox, or perhaps the hooting of a pair of owls calling to one another over the fields, but that was all I’d had to cope with. Here the full orchestra of the jungle, along with my fears, and my memories, as well as the insects, did their very best to prevent me from sleeping. Every night was a battle that had to be won before sleep would come, and every night it was Oona who helped me win it.
Time and time again I found that it was only when my thoughts turned to Oona that I could begin to forget everything else. It was so dark at nights that I often could not see her even though she was always near. I could always hear her though, and that was all the reassurance I needed. I’d listen to her rumbling away, groaning and grunting softly. It was like a lullaby to me. Sometimes, when she came close enough, I could feel her ears wafting away the insects and fanning me gently, reminding me she was there when I was feeling at my very lowest. Somehow she seemed to know when that was, when she was needed most. I’d feel her breath warm my cheek and the soft tip of her trunk checking me out. Then I could relax, then I could sleep. Stuff everything, I thought, stuff all the sadness, stuff the leeches. I had Oona. In the morning everything would be fine again.
And it was.
How long it had been now since the day of the tidal wave I had no idea at all. All sense of time had long since vanished. When I thought about it, I did know it must have been a long while, several months at least – the waxing and waning of the moon told me that much. These were days and months that had changed me utterly, my whole being, my whole reason for living. Back at home, everything I’d done, I’d done for some specific reason and purpose. When I watched a DVD it was to see what would happen at the end. I used to get up at half past seven in the morning in order to go to school, in order to get there on time, because if I didn’t I was in trouble. And when I got to school, I would maybe do a test in order to show I had learned what I was supposed to have learned. Back at home I would have to wash my hands before a meal, because I was told to, because they had to be clean, so that I wouldn’t catch germs and get ill. When I went on a journey, it was always in order to arrive somewhere, at the library perhaps, at the doctor’s, at the seaside, at the farm. Every hour of every day, everything I ever did seemed to have a different purpose. Life was full of endless purposes.
Here in the jungle there was only one simple purpose, and it was the same every day: to stay alive. Oona and I were travelling, not to get from one place to another, not to arrive, but only to find food and water, only to survive. It was a different way of being altogether, a new and uncomplicated kind of existence. And with it came a growing familiarity with the jungle around me, the world I now depended on. I was beginning to feel a kinship with this world, such as I had never known before. I was no longer a stranger in this place.
I was coming to believe more and more that the jungle was where I truly belonged, that I was becoming a part of it, that this new rhythm of life was the same for me as it was for every other creature in the jun
gle, from the leeches on the forest floor that I so loathed, to that distant, shadowy orang-utan I loved to watch swinging majestically above us high in the trees, so unlike the sad little creature I’d seen in that magazine back home, lost and bewildered in the burned-out wasteland of his home. I was sure this one was following us now. I’d see him up there so often. He looked to me like the same one. He was keeping an eye on us, I was sure of it. But orang-utan or leech, snake or gibbon, I was one of them now.
And even to look at I wasn’t the same person any more. From time to time I’d catch sight of myself when I went down to fish in a river or to have a drink. The boy I saw staring back at me hardly resembled the same boy who had been carried off on Oona’s back all that time ago. My shirt had long since been abandoned, ripped apart and shredded by the jungle, so all I had left were my tattered shorts. The buttons had mostly come off by now. So that they wouldn’t fall off, I tied them up as best I could through the belt loops with jungle twine. I still had to keep hitching them up all the time, but it worked well enough, mostly. I was a mess. My hair hung down almost to my shoulders, and was no longer the colour of ripe corn, but was bleached almost white now – my eyebrows too. And my skin was nut brown, with sun or dirt or both. I looked as I felt, like someone else altogether.
It was this transformation, I think, that softened the pain of my grieving and stopped my tears altogether. I was able to believe now that everything before the tidal wave had happened to another boy, a different boy, the pink one, the one who went off to school every day with Tonk and Bart and Charlie, who went for holidays down to the farm in Devon, who drove Grandpa’s tractor, and supported Chelsea and ate pies and crisps before the match, whose Mum and Dad were dead now. That was another boy, in another time, in another world. I was a wild boy now, with calloused hands, with the bottom of my feet as hard as leather, a boy of the jungle, and Oona was all the friends and family I had, all I needed. She was my teacher too, and she taught only by example. From her I was slowly learning to live with the heat and humidity of the jungle, and even with the insects too. Like her, I simply devised a better way of dealing with them. I didn’t curse them or dread them so much, but instead tried to accept them as Oona did. It wasn’t always easy, but I tried.
I learned from her that in the jungle everything and everyone has its place, that to survive you need to find ways of coexisting. You need knowledge of what is dangerous and what is not, what fruit is edible and what water drinkable. But above all you have to live in rhythm with the jungle, as Oona did.
Patience is everything. If you see a snake – be still, let it pass. If a crocodile is basking on a river bank, mouth open, watching you, it means: this is my place, take care, keep out of my way. So much in the jungle depends on respecting the space of others. Some creatures eat one another – leeches ate me for a start – but most are fruit eaters, or insect eaters, or frog eaters, and just want to avoid trouble.
And one of the best ways of avoiding trouble, I was discovering, was being ready for it, being aware. See it coming, hear it coming, and most importantly of all, feel it coming. As Oona had shown me so often, she could do this supremely well. I really did have the very best of teachers.
But it wasn’t Oona who taught me to fish. I had Dad to thank for that. It was seeing a plastic bag caught up on a branch and dangling in a river that reminded me of something he’d taught me once. He never told me much about the things he did in the army – he didn’t seem to want to talk about it. But he did teach me how to catch fish if you were living off the land, with no rod and no line. He used trousers. He showed me. He tied both the legs of some old jeans with twine from a tree, ran more twine through the belt loops, and then strung them up to a branch overhanging the river, so that the jeans were submerged in the water. Ballooned by the current, they acted like a net, so that any passing fish swam in. I remember thinking how brilliant that was – even though Dad never actually caught a fish, just lots of creepy crawlies. I tried it again and again now, using my shorts. It didn’t work the first time, nor the second. But the third time, I caught a fish. It was tiny, but it was a fish. I killed it, scraped off the scales with my teeth and ate it raw. Nothing had ever tasted so good to me as that fish. From then on I caught fish whenever I could.
It made a change from fruit.
Fruit had kept me alive. I could shin up a tree for bananas, but it was the orange coconuts that were the real life savers for me. Sometimes Oona would knock them down, sometimes I would climb for them myself – I was getting pretty good at that. A sharp stabbing stick was all I needed to make a hole. It took a while, but the milk inside was always delicious and sweet. That coconut milk and the flesh inside kept me alive more than any other food.
I was becoming more resourceful with every day, working out for myself better ways of living, safer ways, more comfortable ways. From time to time, when I couldn’t find a convenient rock, I had taken to spending my nights now in a tree. I’d climb up a hanging vine – I’d become quite good at this – make myself a nest of twigs and leaves up in among the branches, bending them in, weaving them into a bed, and then lie down to sleep, with Oona below me nearby. It took a while to build, but it was worth it. There were fewer insects up there to bite me, fewer leeches to eat me. It provided shelter from the rain, and anyway it was a whole lot more comfortable than bedding down on the forest floor, and safer too.
I woke one morning up in a tree to discover the tip of Oona’s trunk touching my shoulder. She was just below me, grunting and swaying impatiently from side to side, a sure sign, I knew, that she wanted to be on her way. Perhaps the food had run out where she was, or maybe she was thirsty. Whatever it was, when Oona wanted to go, I didn’t argue. There was an urgency about her swaying that morning. She clearly wanted me to hurry. There was a wary look in her eye too that made me think at once there might be something worrying her, that she felt there might be some danger nearby. I let myself down from my nest of leaves and on to her neck.
“What is it, Oona?” I said. “What’s the matter?”
She set off at once, and much faster than usual. She was looking about her all the while, and tossing her head. She wasn’t on the lookout for food, I was sure of that. She began to trumpet then, and that was when I knew for sure that something was wrong, that there really was something out there in the jungle that was alarming her. We were being watched. I could feel it. Whatever it was, was nearby, and whatever it was, was dangerous. I was scanning the forest now, looking for any sign of movement. A toucan flew off, a sudden flash of colour through the trees. There were panic calls echoing through the jungle, peacocks screeching, and monkeys hooting, cackling.
And from high above us in the canopy, the orang-utan was crashing about in among the foliage. I could hear him, but I couldn’t see him. The jungle was agitated, unsettled, on edge, watching. I had known it like this once or twice before, a sudden and inexplicable eruption of jungle panic. But Oona had never been worried then. Nothing had ever happened – it had always been a false alarm. This time, something did happen, and when it did, it happened quite suddenly.
I saw a shadow moving through the trees ahead of us. The shadow came into the light, flickered into a flame of orange fire, and became a tiger. He came padding out of the forest on to the trail, stopped and turned to look up at us, hissing at us repeatedly, showing his teeth. Oona trumpeted again, and wheeled round to face him, trunk raised, ears displayed. Then in a moment, all was still. Elephant and tiger stood there eying one another for several minutes, but without ever actually looking straight at each another. There was no more hissing, no more trumpeting. It was a stand-off, neither was going to give way, but then neither was threatening the other either.
When the tiger began to circle us, Oona stood her ground and never moved a muscle. The tiger was right below me now, gazing up at me out of unblinking amber eyes, magnificent, awesome, terrifying. I went cold all over. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I could feel the hairs standing up on the
back of my neck. I dared not breathe, but sat rigid on Oona’s neck, clenching myself all over from my jaws to my fists, holding myself tight together, doing all I could not to betray my fear. I could smell the tiger’s breath as he panted. I could see the pink of his lolling tongue. He was that close. One spring and I knew that would be the end of me. The tiger’s twitching tail told me that it was very likely he was thinking just the same thing.
I did not look directly back into the tiger’s eye – I knew better than to do that with any animal by now. In fact I tried all I could, as the tiger circled us, not to look at him at all, in case my courage failed me completely. I didn’t trust myself to stay brave, which was why in the end I began to play out a fantasy game between myself and the tiger. I made myself believe that this tiger, that was only a couple of metres below me now, was not real at all, but only virtual, virtual like the lion in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, virtual like the polar bear in The Golden Compass, an imagined lion, an imagined polar bear. The tiger looking up at me was still frightening, still terrifying, but this was now an imagined terror that I was living through, the kind I could almost enjoy because I knew the fear was imagined too, only virtual, virtual like the tiger. It was pure self-deception, I knew it was. It may have been a ridiculous ruse, but it worked.
When the tiger came too close for comfort, Oona let him know, not by trumpeting at him, not by charging him. All she did to warn him off was to toss her head at him, swinging her trunk a little, and swishing her tail. It was enough. The tiger licked his whiskers, hissed up at us again a few times to show his displeasure, twitched his tail and padded off back into the jungle, his dignity and Oona’s dignity intact. Oona rumbled inside herself, in triumph, I thought, waved her ears, and then walked nonchalantly on as if nothing at all had happened, reaching up her trunk to pull at the leaves above her, eating as she went.