The smaller orang-utans, I noticed – and it made me smile each time I saw it – were wearing nappies. Some were being fed from a bottle, but mostly they would be playing, rolling and tumbling and clambering over their minders. Of course I looked at once for Bart and Tonk and Charlie in among them, but if they were there, I didn’t recognise them. There were far too many of them, and they all looked so alike.
I would see a few older orang-utans mooching around too, and usually the lady in the straw hat was out there somewhere, crouched down among the little ones maybe, or sometimes sitting cross-legged on the lawn, and playing with the older ones, talking to them. Once or twice I thought I recognised one of the mother orang-utans I saw as Charlie’s mother – hadn’t the lady in the straw hat called her Mani? My memory was becoming less muddled now all the time, but it was still unreliably patchy. This orang-utan had a little one always clinging to her, and she might have been Charlie, but I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t be sure of anything. This whole orang-utan nursery was so bizarre, so unlikely that sometimes I wondered whether what I was seeing was real at all, or whether it might all be part of some fantastical dream.
But I never doubted for one moment as I lay there that Oona was real, and that she was there outside the window. Even by night, when I couldn’t see her, I could hear her rumbling away, groaning and chomping on her food, and farting. Farting she did a lot. It was my constant lullaby and I loved it. Every time she did it, I absolutely knew that Oona could not be part of some crazy dream, because I could smell her. It was her constant presence, the reassuring sound of her, and that familiar smell of her, that began bit by bit to make me feel alive, and part of a real world again – however improbable and strange this new world might seem to be.
Sometimes I could smell lavender too. There were early mornings when I’d wake up to see the woman in the straw hat sitting on a chair beside me, reading a book or writing. Sometimes I still believed that she was Mum, because Mum too had often smelled of lavender. But then she would speak. She had a lilt in her voice that wasn’t at all how Mum spoke, and I would know then that it couldn’t be her after all. And I would remember that Mum was dead in the tsunami. It hurt my heart to realise it, but it was true. This was not Mum.
I longed to talk to this woman in the straw hat. I still didn’t even know who she was. She’d talk to me, take my temperature, tell me how much better I was looking. She’d feed me, and bathe me, but I was still too weak to utter a single word to her. But with every day that passed I was making more and more determined efforts to communicate with her. She could see that I was, and would encourage me. But the effort always proved to be too much, and I would find myself drifting back to sleep again. It made me so angry and frustrated every time I gave in to sleep, but I couldn’t help myself. My need for it was too strong.
I needed it, but I dreaded it too, because of the dream. It wasn’t always exactly the same, but once it started I knew it would always end up the same way, and that was what I dreaded. It would begin well enough. I’d be riding through the jungle high on Oona. Everything was fine. I’d be frolicking with her in the river. That was fine too. Then I’d find myself up in a sleeping nest high in a tree, with Charlie and Bart and Tonk crawling all over me, and they’d be wearing nappies, and the lady in the straw hat would somehow be up there in the nest too. And all that was fine, and funny too.
But then without warning there was fire burning all around us and I couldn’t breathe for the smoke, and I’d be looking everywhere for Dad, stumbling through the smoke, but I could never find him. I was running then through the jungle and the hounds were after me. Sooner or later I would find myself on the beach, still running, and the towering green wave was coming in, and I would see Mum trying to escape it, but it curled over her and she disappeared into it, and the green water was coming into my mouth and I knew I was drowning too.
That was always the moment when I woke up. I’d wake choking, and the woman would be there, her arm around me, giving me water to drink. I couldn’t tell her, but the last thing I wanted to swallow was water. I’d taste it and discover there was no salt in it, and only then did I really understand it had all been a dream. But at the same time I’d also remember that so much of the dream had been true.
The day came when I woke and felt I could sit up on my own if I tried. So I did, I managed it. And moments later when the woman in the straw hat came in carrying a tray, she looked so surprised. “Well you certainly took your time, didn’t you? Weeks you’ve been lying there,” she said. “Do you feel like a bit of breakfast? Will you be able to feed yourself now?”
“I think so,” I replied, surprised at the sound of my own voice, surprised it was working.
She put the tray down on the chair, and sat down on the bed beside him. “You gave us all quite a fright, you know. But the doctor was right. He said it would take a while, but that you were as strong as an ox and that you’d come out of it fine, and you have. What’s amazing is that you survived at all out there. What you need now, young man, is rest and a lot of good food inside you.” She reached out and brushed the hair away from my forehead in much the same way as Mum used to do. At that moment the end of Oona’s trunk curled in through the window.
“For goodness’ sake, will you get that wiggly thing out of here and let the boy eat!” she said, pushing the trunk away. “Do you know that elephant has hardly budged since the very first day you came in here? And what an entrance that was! Naked as a newborn babe you were, did you know that? You gave me one look from up there on that elephant, went as white as milk and just tumbled off. Nearly flattened me you did when you fell. Ever since you arrived she’s been moping around out there. She goes down to the river for a drink from time to time, but that’s all she does, that’s as far as she goes. We’ve had to bring her all her food because she wouldn’t go and get it herself. I thought, to start with, she was just a lazy old thing.”
“Oona,” I told her. “She’s called Oona, and she’s not lazy”
“Pretty name,” she said. “And I know now that Oona’s not lazy, not at all, of course I do. She wouldn’t leave your side, that’s the truth of it. She’d have starved herself to death rather than leave you, honest to God she would. All very noble, I’m sure, but do you know, young man, how much an elephant eats? Tons and tons of the stuff, I’m telling you, and we’ve had to fetch it for her, every last leaf of it. I mean it’s been nonstop, and what’s more we’ve had not a word of thanks from her.”
She got up and lifted the tray on to my lap. “Here. Breakfast. The ladies make it up specially for you, so you eat it now. They’ve taken quite a shine to you. We all have, if I’m honest. Orang-utans we’re used to, but a boy – well, you’re the first.” She pushed Oona’s trunk away again. “Get out of it, will you!” And she wagged her finger at me. “And don’t you be letting her have any of it, do you hear me? Promise me now.”
But I wasn’t interested in food at all. I had other things on my mind. “Where am I?” I asked her. “What is this place? All these orang-utans, and you …”
“Questions, Will, questions. They can all wait,” she told me. “You and me, we’ve got all the time in the world to find out about one another, haven’t we? If you want to get better, and build up your strength, you need to eat. You’ve been very ill, you know. Some nasty little bug off the forest floor, the doctor said. You’re over it. But you must eat.” She smoothed my hair again. “I’m glad you came, Will. We don’t get many visitors out here.”
“You called me Will,” I said. “How d’you know my name?”
“Let’s just say that it’s a long story. I’ll tell you soon enough, when you’re better, when you’re fit and well again.” And that was all she would tell me.
I forced myself to eat, because I wanted to get better, because I knew she was right about that. But for days and days I had no real appetite. I didn’t have the strength yet to be out of bed for long, but I was getting bored just lying there talking to Oona through t
he window all the time. I wanted to be up and about. So one morning I ventured down the steps and walked out on to the lawn to be with the minders and their little orang-utans. In fact, they seemed to me to be more like foster mothers than nurses or minders. In no time at all the orang-utans became accustomed to my being there.
Oona didn’t come with me – she seemed to know when to keep her distance. I sat down, and at once they were right there, half a dozen of them, clambering all over me. And then I saw them – Bart and Tonk running across the grass towards me. They were in nappies now, and each of them had a foster mother of his own in hot pursuit. Best of all was when Charlie appeared on the lawn with her mother. She scampered over to me at once, and soon displaced the others, sitting herself on my head and grooming me, like the old days. Mani didn’t seem to mind. She’d just stay sitting nearby, keeping an eye on things. And that was when I noticed Other One sitting in the shade on the edge of the forest, watching over us all, but still keeping himself to himself.
After that I was out there on the lawn whenever I could be. If I wasn’t there I felt I was missing out. Charlie was always full of beans, but I could see that there were many others who were listless and withdrawn, clutching on tight to their foster mothers as if they’d never let go. I was particularly drawn to these sad little creatures with their wild, frightened eyes. When Charlie and Tonk and Bart left me alone for long enough, I’d go and sit quietly for a while beside one of them, and hold out my hand. Many were far too nervous to take it, but some did, gripping a finger and clinging on. To be trusted, completely trusted, I was learning, is the best of feelings.
Oona would sometimes wander over to remind me she was there, that perhaps it was about time I paid some attention to her now. I couldn’t walk far yet, so I’d sit on the steps of the house, hold her trunk and talk. She would snuffle at my hair, and do her groaning and her rumbling. She was happy.
These were peaceful times and healing days for me. My appetite and my strength were growing every day. I got to talk with many of the orang-utans’ foster mothers, many of whom could speak a little English. But whether or not we understood one another, I had the feeling that I had been ‘adopted’ by all of them. Sitting among them on the lawn I began to understand what a truly amazing place this was. I was living on an island sanctuary in the jungle surrounded by the river, in an orphanage for orang-utans, set up by the woman in the straw hat, whom they all called Dr Geraldine.
As I had supposed, all these infant orang-utans had a foster mother, who never left their sides. They fed them, played with them, taught them to climb trees, slept with them at night, and loved them. Little by little, they were helping me to make some sense of everything that had happened, how it was that Mani had brought us here for instance, how she herself had been one of their orphaned orang-utans. Dr Geraldine had rescued her years ago, they told me – she’d been discovered caged up and locked away in someone’s garage – and had grown up in this place, and lived like all the others with a human adoptive mother. Then, once Mani had been taught to climb, once she could feed herself and fend for herself, she had been released back into the jungle, but to begin with, only as far as the island itself, where the orang-utans would be safe, where Dr Geraldine could keep a watchful eye on them to see how they were managing.
After some while living in this ‘university of the jungle’, as Dr Geraldine called it, they’d be taken away to a huge reserve – it sounded like some kind of national park – miles away upcountry, where they could live out their lives in the jungle proper, as wild orang-utans. A few, like Mani, did find their way home to the orphanage again sometimes, but most settled, and were safe enough, so far as I could understand, provided they didn’t stray from the reserve, and provided that hunters didn’t trespass on the reserve and kill them, or kidnap them, or burn them out. But this was happening all the time, they said. That much I knew only too well.
The orphanage, I learned, had been built almost single-handed by Dr Geraldine herself. She had saved hundreds, maybe thousands of orang-utans, over the last twenty years or more, sometimes risking her own life to rescue them, they said. To begin with, she’d tried to care for them all herself, but very soon there were just too many of them. So she’d gone into the villages up and down the river to recruit the helpers she needed, to mother the little orang-utans, and to try to teach them what their orang-utan mothers would have taught them, until they were ready to be released back into the wild.
Dr Geraldine hadn’t spoken to me herself about any of this. She had been kind, kindness itself, but she was sometimes away for a day or two – I didn’t know where, and she didn’t say. When she was home, she seemed always busy and preoccupied, tired too, and because of this I didn’t find her at all easy to talk to, not to begin with. She was accustomed to silence in her home, I could tell that, so I didn’t feel I could interrupt it with my questions – and I had plenty of them. Everything I knew about her, about this place, I’d found out from the foster mothers, who, like the orang-utans themselves, so very obviously trusted and adored her.
One evening out on the lawn, one of them was singing her praises yet again. “Without Doctor Geraldine,” she was saying, “without her, these creatures would have no life, no future, no hope.”
“And without Doctor Geraldine we would have no work either,” said another. “We love the work as much as we love her. She’s an angel for the orang-utans, and for us too.
“Enough of your tittle-tattling,” came a voice from above me. “An angel I most certainly am not.” I looked up to see Dr Geraldine standing there in her hat. It occurred to me then that I’d never once seen her without her hat on, inside or outside the house, and I wondered what she’d look like without it.
She held out her hand to help me up on to my feet. “I thought if you felt strong enough, Will, if you’re up to it, you might like to come for a walk with me. Not far, just down to the river and back. It’s my constitutional, my evening stroll. Be good to have company.”
We walked for some time in silence down the path, Oona following along some distance behind, Other One alongside her. The two were often together these days, I noticed. I asked about him then, about Other One, whether like Mani he had been one of her orphaned orang-utans. “No,” she told me. “He’s a bit of a strange one, an interloper, you might say. He comes and he goes as he pleases. Sometimes I think he’s inspecting us, checking us out to see if we’re doing things right. I think he approves; I certainly hope so.”
The walk was quite a bit further than I had gone before, and I got tired quickly. So I was happy to reach the end of the jetty and sit down at last. We dangled our legs, and smiled at one another. She took off her hat then, and shook out her hair. “I love this place, Will,” she said. “I come here most evenings if I can, as the sun goes down. It’s a good thinking place, the most peaceful place in the world for me. It’s where I think all my big thoughts, and a lot of my little ones too, come to that.”
I wasn’t really listening. I was staring at her head. She had a large bald patch, from her forehead up to the crown of her head. I could see the skin was puckered and scarred. “Ah, that,” she said, touching the place. “Not a pretty sight. You make enemies doing this kind of work, Will. You know what’s funny? It was a present from someone I don’t even know, one of the big boys in Jakarta who are burning down the forests, killing the orang-utans, selling off the babies. One night, it’d be maybe ten years ago now, they came and tried to burn us out. They very nearly succeeded too. My hair caught fire as I was running out of the house. It’s a secret I like to keep under my hat, if you see what I’m saying.”
She laughed a little at that, but I didn’t. “But there’re worse things than losing your hair, Will,” she said. “You know what? All it did was make me more angry, more determined. They didn’t stop us then, and they won’t stop us now, not ever, not while I’m alive and kicking. We’ve saved quite a few orang-utans – not enough, never enough. But we’re going to save a lot more, bec
ause we have to. Shall I tell you something, Will? If we don’t save them, and if we don’t save the rainforests where they live, then five years from now there won’t be any orang-utans left in the wild. That’s the truth of it.”
“Does it hurt?” I asked her, unable to take my eyes off her scar.
“No, not at all,” she said. “Not any more – well only when I think about it maybe. But that’s not at all what I brought you here to tell you. I want to tell you another truth. I’ve wanted to for a long time, and now I can.” She reached out then and took my hand in hers. “You remember you asked me once, when you first turned up, how it was that I knew your name? The truth is, that I knew a lot more than just your name, Will. I know how you come to be here too – not the whole story of course, but some of it. I’ve known right from the very first moment I set eyes on you.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
She took a deep breath before she went on. “It was a while ago, April 2005, a few months after the tsunami. I know the exact date, because I wrote all about it in my diary. I was walking along the river bank on my evening walk, when I saw a boat coming upriver, towards the jetty. An elderly couple got off. It was late and they were tired, so I offered them a bed for the night. They didn’t want to stop, they said. They’d only dropped by to give me some leaflets, to hand out wherever I could, then they’d be on their way. But I managed to persuade them to come in and at least have some supper with me, and I’m glad I did too. That’s when they told me more about why they had come, what the leaflets were for. They were the grandparents, they said, of a nine-year-old boy lost in the tsunami. He was called Will, and he was their only grandchild.”