Read Online Natural History by Neil Cross - Free Book Online

and everyone seemed happy. And Jane slipped her mobile phone into a pocket, with all the numbers programmed in, and Jo sat there with it all going on around her.
    The end of January 1996.
    All day, Sound Mick and Camra Dave had been following Charlie. They took footage as he played with some of the apes in the A Compound. (The ropes he swung on were fireman’s hoses, heavy-duty rubber and canvas.)
    And always—as Charlie played, pant-grunted, hooted, slapped the ground—Rue watched, serene and good-humoured. It was great for the camera, this relationship between the quiet, pretty young man and the sage old ape; the way she offered him food and groomed his hair.
    In the afternoon, Charlie sipped from a bottle of Evian and talked straight to the camera. As he spoke, Rue tugged at his ear-lobes, his necklace. She ruffled his hair, chucked away his baseball cap. A greying, infirm old coquette hungry for the boy’s attention.
    Ducking and flinching, Charlie said: ‘The bachelors can get scary. I wouldn’t go in there alone, not even if I was allowed.’
    He nuzzled the coarse hair on the back of the gentle chimp’s flat skull. And she pulled her lips back from her teeth, in a clacky, half-mad yellow grin, soft-grunting and smacking her lips. Her merry, coffee-bean eyes.
    After the interview, Charlie sneaked out of the sanctuary to have a quiet cup of tea and a roll-up beneath one of the oak trees overhanging the car park.
    In their shadow sat a dozen contractor’s vehicles—beaten-up vans and painty flat-bed trucks. In the north corner were the staff cars and mopeds. And that’s where he saw Jane and Richard. They were standing head to head, outside Jane’s white Land-Rover Defender. Richard was holding a sheet of paper—perhaps it was a plan of Monkeyland, or a printed-out spreadsheet.
    Their conversation was brief, muttered, intense. Then they stepped back and away from one other, and Richard rolled up the paper. Jane said something and turned away. And as she did, Richard reached out a hand and patted her twice on the arse.
    She glanced over her shoulder and said, ‘Idiot.’
    It was the only word Charlie heard—
    Idiot.
    â€”before Jane saw him. A squatting figure in the blue shadow of the oak, rolling a cigarette. Watching Richard pat his mother on her arse.
    She called his name—‘Charlie?’—and made it a question.
    He finished making his cigarette, then took his time to light it, because his hand was shaking. Then he exhaled and raised a hand in careless hello.
    Jane shaded her eyes—the sun was low in a clear sky—and muttered something else to Richard. He stood at the door of his car, holding the handle. He seemed to be looking at Charlie, but he was too far away for Charlie to see the expression on his face.
    Charlie exhaled through his nostrils, the horsey smell of fresh tobacco. He squatted, heel to haunch, his back to Monkeyland’s exterior wall.
    Jane walked up to him. ‘I didn’t know you smoked.’
    â€˜Two or three a day. Just to chill.’
    â€˜Just to chill,’ she said, trying on his words. She toyed with her necklace. It was a chunk of meteoric iron, set in silver. Jock had given it to her. The meteor had punched into their land, in 1968.
    â€˜Well, don’t be chilling with one of those in the house.’
    He took a defiant, squinty drag. ‘Whatever.’
    She was still toying with the necklace. ‘So—you okay?’
    By now, Richard was at the wheel of. the stationary Land Cruiser, reading something. But he kept looking up.
    Charlie said, ‘Are you ?’
    She tucked hair behind her ear. ‘I’m fine. I spent all our money on a monkey-house that’s got approximately sod-all chance of survival. And if I fail, I’m going to do it on television. Who wouldn’t be fine?’
    Perhaps things no longer felt quite real to her, not until she could see them played