The Tale Of A Tail (IP)

“A tail is an obscene organ”, said Aunt Agatha, a monkey who was anything but obscene in her long black lace dress and stiff, bell shaped crinoline, “Any decent god fearing ape should keep his tail hidden away”.

Charlie, a monkey with a particularly large and cumbersome tail, sipped his tea and coughed nervously, “Yes, Aunt Agatha”, he said, “I agree”.

“!@*&£”, swore her 4 year old grandnephew, Robert, spitting in his tea and hurling it at the wall angrily.

“Children are so innocent aren’t they”, she said, her eyes glowing, “Little angels. They have a natural modesty, I always think”.

“Yes, Aunt Agatha”, said Charlie, shrinking away from the four year old in fear as it bared its teeth and growled.

Charlie hated having tea with his Aunt Agatha; he hated the stiff, starched, white collar he had to wear round his monkey neck and the tailcoat and trousers that covered his tail but, ever since
their part of the Jungle had become part of the British Empire they had been forced to live and dress and behave like English people.

Now, like Good Victorians, they put their children on high pedestals and called them ‘Little Angels’ or, if they refused to play the part, ‘Little Devils’ but never what they really were which was wild cubs without experience and wisdom; red in tooth and claw.

Now, because of the missionaries and, more importantly, their guns, they had all converted to Christianity and held all parts of the body, especially a monkeys long tail, to be obscene or vulgar and people like her aunt Agatha, especially, had gone crazy for it. She who had, only a few years earlier, been happy to grunt and swing from the trees now only spoke the Queen’s English and walked about in her long rustling hoop skirt, carrying her parasol, everywhere, keeping her head and shoulders erect at all times.

“Good posture, Charles!”, said Aunt Agatha, “Only slovenly beasts slouch! English gentlemen never slouch!”.

Charles tried to correct his posture, attempting to be as rigid as his starched shirt but 4 year old Robert was now crawling on the floor biting his leg which made it very hard to sit still.

Then, suddenly, the unimaginable happened. Charlie’s long tail, that had been tucked away neatly inside his imported tweed trousers suddenly popped out, rebelling like some kind of angry Bolshevik against the constraints of 19th Century English fashion.

“What..”, shrieked Aunt Agatha, her eyes popping out from under the prominent brows of her sloping ape forehead, “..is that?!”.

Charlie tried desperately to tuck away his tail but it refused to go back inside, slapping him in the face and fighting strenuously to be free.

“Withers!”, cried Aunt Agatha, thumping her lace gloved fist upon the arm of her wicker chair, “The carving knife! Fetch the carving knife!”.

Then, suddenly, to his horror, Charlie saw a chimp dressed as a butler wielding a long, flashing blade in his left hand, “Yes. Ma’am”, he said, entering with a shuffling gait.

“Withers! Remove that offending protruberance! Cut off that tail!”, said Aunt Agatha, pointing a hairy ape finger at Charlie’s tail.

All this was too much for Charlie, who instinctively leapt up out of his chair with a yelp, latching on to the crystal chandelier that was dangling above them with his feet.

“Come down this instant Charles!”, said Aunt Agatha, “Come down I say and have your tail cut off or I shall have Withers fetch a gun and shoot you down ”.

“I am not about to let you cut off my tail, Aunt Agatha”, said Charlie, shocked by the mania that now seemed to be gleaming in his Aunts eyes, “Nature put it there for a reason. It’s not obscene. It ‘s natural”.

“Natural!”, laughed his Aunt, “What has that do to with anything. My dear Charles, the English have conquered nature. They’ve put a corset of steel around the whole earth and pulled it tight. Nature is vulgar and ugly and dirty and needs to be tamed; civilised and controlled”.

But Charlie had no intention of being butchered or shot by his Aunts butler and, noticing that 4 year old Robert was now bending and exposing his hairy ape bottom to them all, Charlie used his back as a stepping stone to leap towards the drawing room window and out into the freedom of the wonderful lush, wild African jungle.

“Withers!”, screamed Aunt Agatha at her butler, “I said fetch the carving knife! That is a fish knife you are holding! My nephew is not a fish!”.

“Shall I fetch the net madam and the gun!”, said her Butler, hiding the fish knife behind his tailcoat in shame.

“No! Don’t worry!”, said Aunt Agatha, cackling and rubbing her gloved hands together in glee, “The topiary will get him!”.

Suddenly, Charlie heard a roar from behind him like a lion or a leopard but, to his horror, it was neither but a giant African bush that his Aunt’s gardener had topiaried; bound and clipped, into the shape of a lion rampant and then, on the other side of him, another topiaried bush, this one shaped like a unicorn with an immense thorn for a horn, charged towards him; aiming to skewer him through the buttonhole.

Thankfully, nearby was the overhanging branch of an imported Monkey Puzzle tree and, ripping off his confining tail coat, shirt and trousers, he used his long tail to grip hold of one of the trees scaly branches and swing himself over a high garden hedge to freedom, “Thank goodness for my tail", he thought, "Without it, I would’ve been a goner”.