Читать книгу Oliver Strange and the Journey to the Swamps - Dianne Hofmeyr - Страница 6

Strange Travel Companions

The train station was crowded. Standing next to a huge pile of luggage, boxes and strange contraptions, was a girl who also seemed to be travelling alone. Oliver pushed his way across to her.

“Excuse me. Is this the platform for the train to the Victoria Falls?”

The girl didn’t look up.

He stood in front of her and was about to ask again but then saw she had on earphones and was singing to herself. He tapped her shoulder.

She frowned as she looked up and slipped the earphones from her ears. “What?”

“Is this the platform for the Victoria Falls?”

“I hope so!” Then she laughed as she pointed to a sign. “Unless that sign’s wrong.”

At the sound of her voice, a furry creature popped out above the top button of her shirt. A small creature with huge eyes.

“What’s that? A monkey?”

The girl shook her head. “More lemur than monkey. She’s a bushbaby or night ape. Her Ndebele name is impukunyani. Her scientific name is Galago sengalensis. But I call her Bobo.”

She tucked the creature back into her shirt. “What’s your name?”

“Oliver. Oliver Strange. But you can call me Ollie. Most people do.”

She suddenly shot out her hand and gripped his. “Well dumela, then Ollie! My name is Zinzi.” She grinned at him.

Oliver fumbled. It seemed odd to shake a girl’s hand.

“By the way, men and women don’t normally shake hands. So a boy mustn’t reach out for a woman’s hand. It’s impolite.”

“In England, it’s impolite for a boy not to shake a woman’s hand.”

Zinzi laughed. “Customs are different here! Come on then, Ollie. Let’s get going. Here comes the train.”

There was a smell of hot metal and burning coal as the gigantic engine came hissing and snorting into the station like a bellowing buffalo, stampeding hot clouds of steam that swallowed up the crowds on the platform.

A real stream train! He’d never been on a steam train.

The platform was chaotic. People with luggage of all shapes and sizes balanced on their heads and tucked under their arms were pushing and shoving their way between people trying to sell oranges, cigarettes and bars of soap, and rattling and dangling plastic toys and coat hangers in everyone’s faces.

Zinzi hauled out a ticket from the pocket of her shorts. “I’m carriage 2749. Compartment B. What about you?”

Ollie glanced at his ticket and nodded. “Me too.”

“Good. They must’ve put us together because we’re travelling alone.”

Zinzi ran alongside the carriages examining the tickets stuck in holders next to the windows. She shouted back. “Here we are! Stay on the platform while I hop on board. Then pass my stuff up to me.”

“All of it?” Ollie looked at the huge heap of boxes and crates.

Zinzi leaned out of a window. “Careful how you handle that big one. It’s heavy. Don’t let the catch open.”

As he heaved it onto his shoulder, Ollie suddenly came face to face through a layer of mesh, with the biggest snake he had ever seen.

“A snake!” He almost dropped the crate.

“Don’t worry. It’s a small one.”

“Small?”

Zinzi nodded. “Small by python standards.”

Ollie gulped and handed over the crate as fast as he could. “You mean it’s a real python?”

“Well it’s not made of plastic.” And then she laughed. “Don’t worry. It’ll sleep all the way. I fed him a huge rat before I left school. Pythons are lazy after they’ve eaten.”

“Is it poisonous?”

Zinzi shook her head. “Pythons aren’t poisonous. They just squeeze you to death.”

Ollie swallowed hard. Of all things, why did it have to be a snake?

“Hurry up! You’re going to miss the train.”

He hesitated. Perhaps he could ask for another compartment. It was odd in any case to have to share with a girl. But there wasn’t time. He might miss the train. And his aunt’s message had been clear. He was to meet her at Kasane.

He climbed the rungs at the end of the carriage. A sharp, sour smell of coal-dust, hot metal and disinfectant pinched his nostrils as he squeezed past the toilet and the people in the narrow corridor.

Then he froze.

The snake crate was standing in the middle of the tiny space of the compartment.

“It’s okay. You can come in. There’s a catch on the crate. It can’t escape.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Whew! It’s a bit crowded.” Zinzi slid the compartment door closed and began pushing bags and boxes under the bottom bunk and onto the metal racks overhead.

Ollie watched as she pushed the python crate under the bunk as well. “Aren’t you going to check the catch?”

“What d’you take me for?”

Ollie shrugged. “Just asking.”

Ollie slid his eyes away from it to look about. On one side of the compartment were two bunks covered in shiny, green leather with saggy places where too many people had sat. Tucked into a corner was a table with a hinged cover and a leather strap. When he lifted the cover, he discovered a tiny, stainless-steel basin with a single tap beneath. Above was a narrow mirror and to one side, a sliding window with a blind that snapped up and down.

Everything he touched had a gritty coal-dust feeling.

There was a commotion on the platform as doors slammed shut. Then with a sharp whistle and an extra stamp of steam, the train began to move slowly out of the station.

Ollie pushed down the window and leaned out as far as he could. Good job Grandma wasn’t here to see. He waved through the billowing steam to no one in particular.

Goodbye! Goodbye Bulawayo!

Faces and colours blurred together and then stopped abruptly as the platform ended. The train picked up speed and raced past some dark sheds. Broken windows flashed and flickered coded messages in the sunlight.

Finally they were out in the open. Not a single building in sight, just the tangled bush and thorn trees slipping past in a grey blur. The click of the wheels over the joints in the winding, criss-crossing tracks seemed to be singing …

We’re going to I-la-la. We’re going to find your fa-ther.

We’re going to I-la-la. We’re going to find your fa-ther.

Ollie gave a huge sigh. At last! He was truly on his way.

His adventure had begun.

Hot, dry air full of coal soot rushed past his face and made his eyes sting and water. He slammed the window shut.

Zinzi was standing with her feet apart, balancing to the sway of the train. “Which bunk? Top or bottom?”

Ollie glanced at the snake crate sticking out from beneath the bottom bunk. “Top.”

Zinzi nodded. “Top is great. It’s like sleeping in a tree. The train rocks you.”

“Where will Bobo sleep?”

“She’s nocturnal. She’ll jump about. But if you bury your head under your pillow she won’t bother you. D’you have a pet?”

Ollie nodded. “Two stick insects.”

Zinzi looked as if she had just choked on a large sweet. “Stick insects!”

Ollie bit his lip. “We don’t have monkeys in England. And stick insects are … uh … interesting …” was all he could think of. But Zinzi was already beetling about pushing boxes around.

“Are these all your pets?”

“They’re not exactly mine. My school’s part of Wild Care. We look after injured or abandoned creatures. Eagle fledglings that fall from nests. Elephant babies whose mothers have been killed by poachers for their tusks. Injured leguaans.”

Ollie stared at the strange-shaped boxes. What exactly was a leguaan? Wasn’t it a scaly, prehistoric dragon?

“How dangerous is a leguaan?”

“Dangerous enough.”

Ollie kept his mouth shut as his eyes darted about. How dangerous was dangerous enough? “What else have you got?”

Zinzi shrugged. “Jumping spiders. Huge, hairy ones. Like tarantulas. They’re called baboon spiders because they’re so hairy. Bobo doesn’t like them. I keep them boxed while we’re travelling.”

Bobo must have heard her name because she popped out above the top button of Zinzi’s shirt again. Zinzi tickled her under her chin. Her huge, dark eyes flicked open then closed again.

“Her leg’s broken. See. It’s splinted. When it’s fixed she’ll be able to go back into the wild. She’s not exactly a pet. You never really own a wild animal. I offered to look after these ones during the holidays because they weren’t ready to go back into the wild.”

“Won’t your mum be upset?”

Zinzi shrugged. “She’s used to it. She’s a bush doctor.”

“A bush doctor?”

“A wild animal vet. What about you? Why are you here?”

“I’ve come to find my father. He studies frogs. He’s called a herp–”

“Herpetologist.” Zinzi interrupted.

Ollie bit his lip. Compared to a python, leguaans and baboon spiders, frogs seemed even sillier than stick insects but he wanted to defend his father. He didn’t want to let him down. “He knows quite a bit. There’s the orange-legged monkey-frog. The fire-bellied toad. The ghost frog. The poison dart frog …” he trailed off. Suddenly even the names didn’t seem so impressive.

“So what’s he doing in Botswana?”

“He’s collecting data about a small frog. It’s so small it hardly covers a thumb.”

Zinzi nodded. “Probably the painted reed frog. Pale cream, with pinkish dots on it. Sometimes with small dark patches that make it look like a death-head skull.”

A death-head skull? Ollie gave her a look. There wasn’t much this girl didn’t know.

“So where exactly in Botswana is your father?”

Ollie shrugged. “That’s the problem. I don’t know. He’s disappeared. And I’m worried.”

There was a sudden roar as the train dived through a tunnel and the compartment was plunged into darkness. Then with a whoosh they were out the other side. Someone rattled the compartment door then flung it open. A smell of curried chicken and burnt coffee wafted in from the steward’s trolley in the corridor.

“You hungry?” Zinzi asked.

Ollie nodded.

The setting sun made a fire across the sky that leapt into their compartment as they ate at the small fold-out table. He was hungrier than he thought even though the chicken seemed to have pieces of orange pumpkin mixed in with it. Then just as quickly the fire went out of the sky and the trees turned into dark silhouettes.

Ollie climbed onto his bunk and lay up close to the window and stared out through his reflection into the greenish light. The moon was coming up already: a huge round mother-of-pearl button stuck on a pale velvet coat against an outline of trees with flat tops and even stranger ones that seemed to be growing upside down with their roots in the air.

It was odd. Here he was in Africa watching the moon and Grandma was watching the same moon rising over the rooftops in Tooting.

Tooting suddenly seemed a zillion, million miles away.

Everything was odd.

It was odd his aunt hadn’t been there to meet him.

It was odd to be hurtling across Africa on a train.

And odd to be sharing a compartment with a girl.

Zinzi had already settled down with her earphones glued to her ears. He took out his notebook and his torch, then discovered there was a little overhead reading light, so he slipped his torch into his shirt pocket.

It probably wasn’t a good idea to tell Grandma about the python or baboon spiders or that Aunt Hortense hadn’t been at the airport to meet him.

He nibbled his pencil and then began writing.

He tore the page from his notebook, folded it and stuffed it into an envelope he had brought along. Then without bothering to get undressed or brush his teeth he switched off the light and lay back and listened to the wheels of the train singing …

We’re going to I-la-la. We’re going to find your fa-ther.

We’re going to I-la-la. We’re going to find your fa-ther.

Zinzi was right. The top bunk was exactly like being up in a tree.

He snuggled deeper into his sleeping bag.

He woke with a start as something landed on his stomach. He lay dead still, not even moving an eyelid, and waited. It wasn’t heavy enough to be a python.

He sat up and bumped his head on the ceiling.

“Ouch!”

There was a squeal and a small shape went flying up into the luggage rack above him.

He felt for his torch in his pocket. Two luminous yellow eyes reflected back at him in the dark like two bright torch lights.

“Bobo!” he hissed as she leapt to the rack on the opposite side of the compartment. The splint on her leg didn’t seem to bother her in the least.

Ollie leant down from his bunk. “Zinzi! Wake up!”

The lump on the bunk below stirred. “What?”

“Bobo’s jumping about.”

“That’s what bushbabies do at night.”

“All night?”

“Go to sleep, Ollie,” Zinzi mumbled.

“I can’t. Not with her flying about.”

“She’ll settle down when the sun comes up.”

Ollie peered out through the window into the night. “That’s not for ages.”

“If you sing her a lemur lullaby, she’ll quieten down.”

A lemur lullaby? This girl was weird. “I don’t know any lemur lullabies!”

He could hear Zinzi already breathing deeply again. He lay back in his bunk. “Rock-a-Bye Baby” might be a good one for a lemur. At least it had trees in it. He began singing. Sure enough, Bobo sat still and watched from the bottom of his bunk.

The lullaby must have put him to sleep too, because he woke with Zinzi shaking him. “Wake up, Ollie! We’re here.”

The compartment was flooded with bright sunshine. He’d slept in his clothes and by the looks of Zinzi so had she. He glanced out the window. “Is this Kasane?”

“No. The Victoria Falls. We have to catch a bus to Kasane. But if we hurry there’s time to see the Zambezi and the Falls – Mosi-oa-Tunya – the smoke that thunders.”