Mr Ape Read online

  Contents

  1 Ape Has a Brainwave

  2 Ape Goes to Market

  3 Ape Has Visitors

  4 Ape Gets Some Pets

  5 Ape Has a Birthday

  6 Ape Gets Nice Surprises

  7 Ape Does a Deal

  8 Ape Gets Some Advice

  9 Ape Starts a Fire

  10 Ape Hits Rock Bottom

  11 Ape Buys a House

  12 Ape Makes a Decision

  13 Ape Hits the Trail

  About the Author

  Dick King-Smith served in the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War, and afterwards spent twenty years as a farmer in Gloucestershire, the county of his birth. Many of his stories are inspired by his farming experiences. Later he taught at a village primary school. His first book, The Fox Busters, was published in 1978. He wrote a great number of children’s books, including The Sheep-Pig (winner of the Guardian Award and filmed as Babe), Harry’s Mad, Noah’s Brother, The Queen’s Nose, Martin’s Mice, Ace, The Cuckoo Child and Harriet’s Hare (winner of the Children’s Book Award in 1995). At the British Book Awards in 1991 he was voted Children’s Author of the Year. In 2009 he was made an OBE for services to children’s literature. Dick King-Smith died in 2011 at the age of eighty-eight.

  Discover more about Dick King-Smith at:

  dickkingsmith.com

  Some other books by Dick King-Smith

  BLESSU

  DINOSAUR SCHOOL

  DINOSAUR TROUBLE

  DUMPLING

  FAT LAWRENCE

  THE FOX BUSTERS

  GEORGE SPEAKS

  THE GOLDEN GOOSE

  HARRY’S MAD

  THE HODGEHEG

  THE JENIUS

  JUST BINNIE

  LADY DAISY

  THE MAGIC CARPET SLIPPERS

  MAGNUS POWERMOUSE

  MARTIN’S MICE

  THE MOUSE FAMILY ROBINSON

  POPPET

  THE QUEEN’S NOSE

  THE SCHOOLMOUSE

  THE SHEEP-PIG

  SMASHER

  THE SWOOSE

  UNDER THE MISHMASH TREES

  THE WATER HORSE

  CHAPTER 1

  Ape Has a Brainwave

  For some time now, Archibald Peregrine Edmund Spring-Russell of Penny Royal had slept in his kitchen.

  It was not on account of a shortage of bedrooms. In fact there were fifteen bedrooms in Penny Royal, a huge rambling barracks of a house, given to an earlier Spring-Russell by King Charles II, for services rendered.

  The reason was a simple one. The kitchen was enormous, the kitchen was warm, the kitchen was where Archibald cooked and ate and spent most of his indoor time, so he thought, why not sleep there? And he moved his bed down.

  Archibald Spring-Russell lived quite alone at Penny Royal, and the few people who came to the house – the postman, the milkman, the coalman, the man who came to read the meter – addressed him as ‘Mr Spring-Russell’. Not that he ever said much to any of them – he was a man of few words. Some people thought him grumpy, but in fact his manner was really due to shyness. Had any of his old friends (of whom he hadn’t many) come to visit (which they didn’t), they would not have used the name Archibald, nor Archie, nor either of his other names. They would have called him by the nickname he had acquired as a schoolboy, when, on account of his initials, he had always been known as ‘Ape’.

  Strangely, this had fitted him. He had been a large, shambling, loose-limbed boy, and now he was a large, shambling, loose-limbed old man, who walked about with long arms hanging low, as though at any moment he might drop onto all fours.

  Ape lived alone at Penny Royal for the simple reason that his family had left him. His children (in whom he had never been very interested) had grown up and gone out into the world, and when the last one left, his wife had said, ‘Right, Ape, I’m sick of this ugly great house and I’m tired of you, so I’m off.’

  For most people this would have been upsetting after thirty years of marriage. But though at first surprised by it, Ape found that he was really rather relieved.

  At last he had the place to himself (for his wife, before leaving, had dismissed all the servants), and he thought, I can do as I like. For Mrs Spring-Russell was a very bossy lady, and over the last thirty years Ape had done as he was told.

  One of the things he had been told was that no animal of any kind might be kept at Penny Royal. His wife had considered them dirty, and his children, when young, had never been the least bit interested in keeping pets. Whereas Ape as a boy had kept chickens and rabbits and guinea-pigs, and had lavished upon them rather more affection than he had later been able to feel for his sons and daughters, with whom he had little in common.

  For one thing, they hadn’t much of a sense of humour. Once he had said to them, ‘Do you know what you are?’

  ‘No,’ they said. ‘What?’

  ‘You,’ said Ape, ‘are the Offspring-Russells,’ but they all looked quite blank.

  Nor were they particularly nice – quite horrid in fact, selfish and uncaring and rude to the servants.

  For the first week or so after the departure of his wife and all the servants Ape made a vague effort to keep the great house clean and tidy, but this, he soon realized, was too much for an old man to do, even a strong old man, and he decided to shut most of the place up.

  First he shut up fourteen of the fifteen bedrooms. Then he closed the doors of the huge high-ceilinged drawing room, and the long lofty dining room, and the music room, and the sewing room, and the flower room, and the library, and the billiard room, and the butler’s pantry.

  Then Ape shut up each of the dozens of other rooms in Penny Royal, except for one bathroom, one lavatory and the kitchen. A couple of weeks later, finding that he spent a great deal of his time in this last-named room, he was able to shut the door of the fifteenth bedroom after spending a day moving his four-poster bed to the kitchen. He took it all to pieces, manoeuvred it bit by bit down the great curving central staircase of the house, and re-erected it nice and near to the warmth of the big old-fashioned coal-fired range, where the food had been prepared first for the Spring-Russell family, and later, after they had finished their meals, for the cook and the butler and the parlourmaid and the two housemaids and the boy who cleaned the boots.

  After a while Ape found that he was rather enjoying cooking for himself. Before, his wife, in consultation with the cook, had always chosen the menus for the day. But now Ape could make all his favourite meals, things he had liked as a boy – sausages, for example, and Welsh rarebit, and fish-fingers, and rice pudding that he mixed with crumbled-up digestive biscuits and strawberry jam. And eggs – boiled, fried, poached, scrambled. Ape was particularly fond of eggs.

  Doing the shopping all by himself was another new experience that was fun, so much so that every day he drove into town in his ancient but well-preserved Rolls-Royce, and spent a lot of time in the supermarket, choosing schoolboy food.

  Before long it occurred to him – as he was putting a carton of eggs into his trolley – that here was something he needn’t buy now. He could keep his own hens, to provide his own eggs, at home, at Penny Royal!

  He thought excitedly about this that evening, as he sat up eating his supper of turkeyburgers and wavy chips and baked beans, with Instant Whip to follow. Now that he had things properly arranged, it was only his lunch that Ape ate at the big wooden kitchen table. His breakfast, and his supper, he naturally ate in bed.

  ‘I shall buy some hens,’ he said (to himself but out loud: it was nice to be able to say things without fear of contradiction from his wife). ‘But where shall I keep them?’

  Naturally, because of Mrs Spring-Russell’s aversion to animals, there was no such thing as a chicken-house at Penny Royal. There were
stables (where no horse had been allowed) and kennels (where no dog had set foot), and even a great stone dovecot shaped like a pepperpot (from which no dove had ever flown).

  ‘It would be possible,’ said Ape, ‘to keep hens in one or other of those. But they would not be very comfortable in such cold draughty places, and then if I let them out in the daytime, there’s always the risk of a passing fox. What they will need is somewhere warm and dry and comfortable and safe and roomy. But where?’

  When Ape had finished his Instant Whip (caramel-flavoured), he got out of bed and put his supper things in a bowl in the kitchen sink to soak. Then he put on his bedroom slippers and an old dressing gown and went out of the kitchen and along a passage that led to the great central hall of Penny Royal.

  Around this he shambled, long arms hanging, deep in thought, passing the closed doors of the various rooms.

  He stopped by chance outside the door of the drawing room. Absently he opened it and walked in and looked around at the deep armchairs and sofas, at the heavy pieces of furniture, at the rich soft carpets.

  On one wall of this large room was a full-length portrait of his wife, dressed in a ballgown of a hideous shade of blue, and looking at her bossiest. Ape stood before it, staring up. ‘I,’ he said, ‘am going to keep some hens and you can’t stop me!’ and he put out his tongue at the portrait. ‘But where shall I keep them?’ he said as he turned away.

  Then it was that A. P. E. Spring-Russell Esquire of Penny Royal in the county of Gloucestershire raised one of his long arms and smote himself upon the forehead with a shout of joy. ‘In here!’ he cried. ‘It’s warm and it’s dry and it’s comfortable and it’s safe and it’s roomy. I’ll keep my hens in my drawing room!’

  CHAPTER 2

  Ape Goes to Market

  The first thing to be done, Ape realized, was to get rid of the deep armchairs and sofas, the heavy pieces of furniture, the rich soft carpets, none of which would be of any use to hens. Nor would the grand piano, nor the occasional tables with their ornaments, nor the long velvet curtains, nor the gilt-framed paintings upon the walls.

  ‘I shall sell the lot,’ said Ape to his wife’s portrait, ‘except you. You can jolly well stay up there and keep an eye on my hens.

  ‘Come to think of it,’ he went on, ‘I might as well sell every stick of furniture in the place. It’s no use to me, I’ve got everything I need in the kitchen.’

  So it was that before long there was a great sale of the contents of Penny Royal, to which buyers came from all over the country. They saw no sign of the owner, Mr Spring-Russell, though some of them noticed two things. First, that on the kitchen door there was a large notice that read:

  and then that in the drawing room there hung a portrait of Mrs Spring-Russell, with a small notice that read: not for sale.

  ‘Tragic!’ they said to one another. ‘The old chap’s shut himself away – can’t bear to see his precious belongings sold. But he won’t part with the picture of his beloved wife.’

  Once all the furniture had gone Ape came out of hiding and walked about all over the house, visiting each room and enjoying its bareness. Last of all he came to the drawing room, empty of everything but the portrait and, beneath it, Mrs Spring-Russell’s favourite armchair, a great high-backed ornate thing like a throne.

  Ape had instructed the auctioneers to put a second not for sale notice on it. He had always hated it, and hoped that his hens would dislike it too and sit in it and show their feelings in the proper manner. He stumped happily round it, his steps loud on the large expanse of bare floorboards.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I can buy my hens. But first I must provide for them.’

  So he made several journeys into town in the old Rolls-Royce, loading it with sacks of chicken-food and a metal bin to store it in, and feeding-troughs, and water-fountains, and a great many bags of sawdust.

  It was not until the drawing room was all ready to receive its new occupants – the feeding-troughs and water-fountains filled, the sawdust spread over the floorboards – that Ape realized what was missing. Perches! The birds would need somewhere to perch at night. Later Ape lay in bed eating beefburgers and tomato sauce and worrying about the problem, for on the morrow – which was market day – he had planned to buy his hens.

  Suddenly he saw the answer, right in front of his eyes.

  Suspended from the high ceiling of the kitchen, from where they could be lowered by a system of ropes and pulleys, were several long wooden racks, used in the past by the staff of Penny Royal for drying all the laundry of the house. They were in effect aerial clothes-horses, but it was the work of moments for Ape to convert them into down-to-earth hen-perches.

  He lowered them, cut through their supporting ropes, carried them through and set them up in the drawing room, and then went happily back to bed and to sleep.

  Ape woke next morning with that thrilling feeling of something very exciting about to happen. He boiled the eggs for his breakfast – the last eggs he would have to buy – and then got back into bed and sat up, dipping soldiers into them.

  ‘What sort of hens will they have for sale, I wonder?’ he said. ‘And how many shall I get? I can buy as many as I like – the drawing room’s plenty big enough. I wonder what colour they will be. I hope they’ll lay brown eggs – I like brown eggs.’

  And then, as he swallowed his last soldier, another worrying thought suddenly occurred to him.

  Nest-boxes! They must have somewhere to lay those eggs – not just drop them anywhere on the floor.

  As he dressed in the clothes he always wore, a hairy tweed suit of an old-fashioned cut, and brown boots, he stood in the middle of the kitchen, settling the knot of his old school tie and worrying about this problem of nest-boxes.

  Then once again he saw the solution right in front of him. Against the wall stood a tall old kitchen dresser of pale-coloured wood, with, beneath its high shelves, six drawers – drawers that were filled with an army of knives, forks and spoons.

  ‘All I need is one of each,’ said Ape, and he collected up all the rest and dumped them in a cupboard.

  Then he took out the six drawers and laid them along one wall of the drawing room (just beneath the portrait).

  Then he fetched some straw from the stables and, while Mrs Spring-Russell looked down with disapproving eyes, filled the drawer-nest-boxes.

  Now all was ready.

  Ape put on the old brown curly-brimmed bowler hat that he always wore to go to town, and went out to start up the Rolls-Royce.

  No sooner had Ape shambled into the covered part of the market which housed the poultry for sale than he saw exactly what he fancied.

  There, in a wire cage, were twelve beautiful big brown hens. There were many other pens of birds for sale – white ones, black ones, spotty ones – but Ape hardly gave them a second glance.

  By the time the auctioneer came to sell the hens, Ape, having found an ice-cream van, was licking away at a large cornet – his second – of his favourite flavour, strawberry.

  When the bidding began for the dozen brown hens, other farmers and poultry-keepers made their bids by a nod or a wink or a tap of the nose or a pull at an ear lobe.

  Ape bid by holding aloft his strawberry cornet, and hold it up he did, time and again, till the price rose so high that all the others dropped out, and the birds were knocked down to him.

  ‘Sold to the gentleman in the, er, brown hat,’ said the auctioneer.

  ‘Your name, sir?’

  ‘Spring-Russell,’ said Ape.

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Penny Royal.’

  A moment later one of the hauliers approached Ape, offering to deliver the hens. ‘I’m going your way, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t need you,’ said Ape, ‘but I’d be obliged if you’d crate them up and stick them in my car.’

  ‘You never saw anything like it,’ said the haulier later to a crowd of his mates in the pub. ‘There’s this big old guy dressed like I don’t know what and h
e pays the earth for a dozen hens and gets me to put ’em in a couple of crates and stow them on the back seat of his car, which just happens to be a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, and you’ll never guess what he gives me for a tip.’

  ‘Ten p?’ they said.

  ‘A ten-pound note,’ said the haulier. ‘They don’t breed ’em like that any more. Ten quid, just for lifting a couple of crates. You could have knocked me down with a feather.’

  It wouldn’t even have needed a feather to knock the haulier down if he had seen, some time later, twelve beautiful big brown hens wandering contentedly around the great drawing room at Penny Royal, pecking in the feeding-troughs, sipping from the water-fountains, fluttering up to try out the perches.

  To put the seal on Ape’s pleasure, one of them almost immediately hopped into a drawer and proceeded to lay a beautiful big brown egg, right under Mrs Spring-Russell’s nose.

  CHAPTER 3

  Ape Has Visitors

  That first egg was followed, early next morning, by several more. Soon after waking in his four-poster in the kitchen, Ape heard, coming from the drawing room, the triumphant cackling which every hen makes after laying, and knew that he now had two for his breakfast.

  Later, sitting up in bed eating them, he heard more cackles, and by the time he was dressed and had returned to the drawing room, there were half a dozen more eggs in the drawer nest-boxes. In fact, despite making himself scrambled eggs for lunch and an omelette for his supper, there were still a couple of eggs left over by the end of the day.

  ‘Well done, girls!’ said Ape proudly when he went to say good night to his beautiful big brown hens. ‘I can see I shall have a job to keep up with you.’

  The last of the daylight, coming in through the tall French windows, showed them dozing now on their clothes-rack perches, muttering sleepily to one another.

  So busy had Ape been within the walls of Penny Royal that he had given no thought to what was happening outside. But when, next day, he happened to look out of the French windows, where normally he would have expected to see a great sweep of beautifully mown lawns, he saw instead what looked like a hayfield.