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Also by Michael Morpurgo

Arthur: High King of Britain

Friend or Foe

The Ghost of Grania O’Malley

Kensuke’s Kingdom

King of the Cloud Forests

Little Foxes

Long Way Home

Mr Nobody’s Eyes

My Friend Walter

The Nine Lives of Montezuma

The Sandman and the Turtles

The Sleeping Sword

Twist of Gold

Waiting for Anya

War Horse

The War of Jenkins’ Ear

The White Horse of Zennor

The Wreck of Zanzibar

Why the Whales Came

For Younger Readers

Conker

Mairi’s Mermaid

The Best Christmas Present in the World

The Marble Crusher

For Conrad and Anne

CONTENTS

1 A bit of old goat

2 Water music

3 Barnardo’s boys

4 The prodigal father

5 Nowhere man

6 And all shall be well

7 Shangri-La

8 The Lucie Alice

9 Gone missing

10 Dunkirk

11 The great escape

12 Earlie in the morning

13 Message to my father

1 A BIT OF AN OLD GOAT

I WAS KNEELING UP AGAINST THE BACK OF THE sofa looking out of the window. Summer holidays and raining, raining streams. ‘He’s been there all day,’ I said.

‘Who has?’ My mother was still doing the ironing. ‘I don’t know why,’ she went on, ‘but I love ironing. Therapeutic, restorative, satisfying. Not like teaching at all. Teaching’s definitely not therapeutic.’ She talked a lot about teaching, even in the holidays.

‘That man. He just stands there. He just stands there staring at us.’

‘It’s a free world, isn’t it?’

The old man was standing on the opposite side of the road outside Mrs Martin’s house underneath the lamppost. Sometimes he’d be leaning up against it, and sometimes he’d be just standing there, shoulders hunched, his hands deep in his pockets. But always he’d be looking, looking right at me. He was wearing a blue donkey jacket – or perhaps it was a sailor’s jacket, I couldn’t tell – the collar turned up against the rain. His hair was long, long and white, and it seemed to be tied up in a ponytail behind him. He looked like some ancient Viking warlord.

‘Come and see,’ I said. ‘He’s strange, really strange.’ But she never even looked up. How anyone could be so obsessively absorbed in ironing was beyond me. She was patting the shirt she’d finished, sadly, her head on one side, just as if she was saying goodbye to an old dog. I turned to the window again.

‘What’s he up to? He must be soaked. Mum!’ At last she came over. She was kneeling beside me on the sofa now and smelling all freshly ironed herself. ‘All day, he’s been there all day, ever since breakfast. Honest.’

‘All that hair,’ she tutted. ‘He looks a bit of a tramp if you ask me, a bit of an old goat.’ And she wrinkled up her nose in disapproval, as if she could smell him, even from this far away.

‘And what’s wrong with tramps, then?’ I said. ‘I thought you said it was a free world.’

‘Free-ish, Cessie dear, only free-ish.’ And she leant across me and closed the curtains. ‘There, now he can look at the back of our William Morris lily pattern to his heart’s content, and we don’t have to look at him any more, do we?’ She smiled her ever so knowing smile at me. ‘Do you think I was born yesterday, Cessie Stevens? Do you think I don’t know what this is all about? It’s the “p” word, isn’t it? Pro . . . cras . . . tin . . . ation.’ She was right of course. She enunciated it excruciatingly slowly, deliberately teasing the word out for greatest effect. She was expert at it. My mother wasn’t a teacher for nothing. ‘Violin practice, Cessie. First you said you’d do it this morning, then you were going to do it this afternoon. And now it’s already this evening and you still haven’t done it, have you?’

She was off the sofa now and crouching down in front of me, looking into my face, her hands on mine. ‘Come on. Before your dad gets home. You know how it upsets him when you don’t practise. Be an angel.’

‘I am not an angel,’ I said firmly. ‘And I don’t want to be an angel either.’ I was out of the room and up the stairs before she could say another word.

I was ambivalent about my mother. I was closer to her than anyone else in this world. She had always been my only confidant, my most trusted friend. Whatever I did, she would always defend me to the hilt. I’d overhear her talking about me. ‘She’s just going through that awkward prickly stage,’ she’d explain. ‘Half girl, half woman. Not the one thing, nor the other. She’ll come out of it.’ But sometimes she just couldn’t stop playing teacher. Worst of all, she would use my father as a weapon against me. In fact, my father was never really upset when I didn’t practise my violin, but I knew that he would be disappointed. And I hated to disappoint him – she knew that too.

Whenever he could, whenever he was home, my father would come up to my room to hear me play. He’d sit back in my chair, put his hands behind his head and close his eyes. When I played well – and I usually did when he was there – he would give me a huge bear hug afterwards, and say something like, ‘Eat your heart out, Yehudi.’ But just recently, ever since we moved house, my father hadn’t been able to hear me that much. His new job at the radio station kept him busier than ever – he had two shows a day and some at weekends too. I’d listen in from time to time just to hear his voice, but it was never the same. He was never my father on the radio.

I was ambivalent about my violin too. The truth was that I loved it with a passion. I loved the secrecy of its hidden life shut away in its green baize case, the soft snuggle of the pad under my chin, the smoothness of the horsehair when I drew my bow across the inside of my wrist to test its tautness. I loved playing my violin too, but I had always hated practising, and in particular I hated being told to practise. Once I could forget that I was practising, once I could lose myself in the music, then I could play quite happily for hours on end and not even notice the passing of time.

I was just beginning to enjoy it, just beginning to feel at one with my violin. I was playing Handel’s Largo so well I could feel my skin pricking with pleasure all down my arms. But then the doorbell rang. The magic was broken. I was immediately back to hateful practising. The bell rang again. Any excuse to avoid practising was good enough. I put the violin down on my bed, and my bow too, and went to the top of the stairs to see who it was. I heard the front door opening. There was a shadow down in the hallway, and my mother was standing beside it, motionless.

‘Who is it?’ I said, as I came down the stairs.

The shadow moved suddenly into the light of the hallway and became the old man from across the road. He was standing there, dripping. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to intrude.’

His face tremored into a smile as he saw me. ‘Cessie?’ He knew my name! ‘You must be Cessie. I know this is going to sound a bit odd, but I’m your grandad. I’m your dad’s dad, so that makes me your grandad, doesn’t it?’ He looked full at my mother now. ‘It’s true, true as I’m standing here. I’m young Arthur’s dad. When I knew him last he was only little, five years old, and that’s near enough fifty years ago. Long time.’ For a moment or two, he didn’t seem to know what else to say. ‘Big ears. Born with big ears, he was, like a baby elephant. That’s why we called him Arthur. You know those Babar books, do you?’ I nodded because I couldn’t speak. ‘I was Babar, if you see what I mean. His mum was Celeste, and so the little fellow, our son, was called Arthur. He didn’t have a trunk of course.’ I smiled at that, and he caught it and tossed it back at me, his eyes suddenly bright.

‘You’d be a bit old for all that now, I suppose. All grown up, I expect.’ He was scrutinising me now. ‘Come to think of it, you look a bit like little Arthur too, except for the ears of course. You’ve got nice ears, nice and neat, like they should be. Not flapping around in the wind like his were. What are you? Thirteen? Fourteen?’

‘Eleven,’ I said. I felt my mother take my hand and hold on to it tightly, so tightly it was hurting me.

‘Seventy-five.’ The old man was pointing to himself. ‘I’m seventy-five. Old as the hills, eh? Do you know what your dad used to call me when he was little? “Popsicle”. “Pops” to start off with. Then it was Popsicle. Don’t know why. It’s what everyone’s always called me ever since – Popsicle, Popsicle Stevens.’

‘You can’t be,’ my mother whispered, pulling me close to her. ‘You can’t be him. Arthur hasn’t got a father.’ The old man seemed suddenly unsteady on his feet. He swayed and staggered forward. Instinctively we both backed away from him. He was dripping from his ears, from his chin, from his fingers too. It was as if his whole body was weeping tears. His hair, I noticed, wasn’t really white at all, but creamy, almost yellow in places. It didn’t look very clean. None of him did.

‘Everyone’s got a father,’ he said, and he was holding out his arms towards us – just like ghosts do, I thought. ‘I’m not a ghost, Cessie.’ We backed further away. Ghosts can read minds. ‘I’m telling you, I’m Popsicle Stevens and I’m Arthur’s father, and I’m alive, alive, oh. I mean ghosts don’t get hungry, do they? And they don’t get fruzzed either.’ He reached out suddenly and caught me by my wrist. ‘Feel that?’ He was as cold as stone, but he was real. He was no ghost. ‘You wouldn’t have a nice cup of tea, would you, just to warm a fellow through?’

My mother stood her ground now, pulling me behind her, clasping my hand even tighter still. ‘How do I know? You could be anyone, couldn’t you? Coming in off the street like that, you could be anyone. How do I know you’re who you say you are?’

The old man took a deep breath before he spoke. ‘Listen, these old grey cells up here’ – he was tapping his temple – ‘they may not be what they once were, but there’s some things you don’t get wrong. If you’ve got an Arthur Stevens living here, and he grew up in a little place called Bradwell-on-Sea – on the Essex coast it is – if he’s your husband, and if he’s your dad, then, unless I’m mistaken – which I don’t think I am – we’re kith and kin, all of us. I just thought I’d look him up, that’s all. I didn’t think it could do any harm – not now, not any more.’

In the silence of the hallway I could almost hear my mother thinking, perhaps because we were thinking the same thing. My father had grown up on the Essex coast. We’d been there. We’d seen the house where he was born. His childhood was a bit of a mystery. He’d been a Barnado’s boy – I knew that much. His mother, my grandmother, had died young – I knew that too – a long time before I was born. As for his father, I’d known little or nothing of him. My father had never spoken of him, not in my hearing anyway. If I had thought about him at all, and I am not sure that I had, then I suppose I had simply presumed he was dead, like my grandmother was.

The old man was unbuttoning his jacket now, and fumbling deep inside. My mother still held me by the hand in a grip of steel. The wallet he took out was stuffed full, like some battered leather sandwich. He opened it up with great care, almost reverently. With shaky fingers he pulled out an old photograph, faded to sepia, torn at the edges and criss-crossed with creases. He gave it to us. A young man looked at me out of the photograph. He was standing in front of a clapperboard house with roses growing up around the windows. Astride his shoulders sat a small boy clutching his hair with both fists. Beside them stood a young woman who was looking up at them adoringly.

‘That’s your grandmother,’ he said, ‘and there’s me with little Arthur, your dad, that is, pulling my hair by the roots. He was always doing that, little rascal. Summer 1950. That was the last summer we were all together.’

‘What was she called?’ My mother was still interrogating him. ‘Arthur’s mother. What was she called?’

The question clearly troubled him. He seemed reluctant to answer, but when he spoke at last he spoke very deliberately. ‘Cecilia,’ he said. ‘She was called Cecilia.’ Then he was looking at me and beaming. ‘Of course. I didn’t think of it till now, Cessie. That’d be after your grandmother, wouldn’t it?’

He was right. He’d been right about everything. I felt a warm shiver creeping up the back of my neck. My grandmother had been called Cecilia, and I had been named after her, I’d always known that. There was a photograph of her on top of the piano in the sitting-room. She was young in the photograph, somehow too young for me to have ever thought of her as a grandmother.

I looked up into his face. The eyes were deep-set and gentle. They were blue. He had blue eyes. My father had blue eyes. I had blue eyes. That was the moment the last doubts vanished. This man had to be my father’s father, my grandfather.

For some time we just stood there and stared at him.

I squeezed my mother’s hand, urging her to do something, say something, anything. She looked down at me. I could see she was still unsure. But I knew he was not lying. I knew what lying was all about. I did it a lot. This man was not doing it. It takes a liar to know a liar.

‘You’d better come in,’ I said.

I broke free of my mother’s grasp, took my grandfather gently by the arm and led him into the warmth of the kitchen.

2 WATER MUSIC

‘I’M AFRAID I’VE GOT A VERY SWEET TOOTH,’ HE said, stirring five heaped teaspoons of sugar into his tea. We sat watching him as he sipped and slurped, both hands holding the mug. He was savouring it. In between sips he set about the plate of chocolate digestive biscuits, dunking every one till it was soggy all through, and devouring one after another with scarcely a pause for breath. He must have been really famished. His face was weathered brown and crinkled and craggy, like the bark of an old oak tree. I’d never seen a face like it. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

I did all the talking. Someone had to. I can’t stand silences – they make me uncomfortable. He was obviously too intent on his tea and biscuits to say anything at all, and my mother just sat there staring across the kitchen table at him. How many times had she told me not to stare at people? And here she was gawping at him shamelessly. It was as if Quasimodo had dropped in for tea.

I had to think of something sensible to talk about, and I reasoned that he might want to know something about me, about his new-found granddaughter. After all, he had my whole life to catch up on. So I gave him a potted autobiography, heavily selective, just the bits I thought might be interesting: how we’d just moved here six months ago, where I went to school, who my worst enemies were. I told him in particular about Shirley Watson and Mandy Bethel, and about how they’d always baited me at school, because I was new perhaps, or maybe because I kept myself to myself and was never one of the girls. All the while he kept on chomping and slurping, but he was listening too. I could tell he was because he was smiling at all the right places. I’d told him just about everything I could think of, when I remembered my violin.

‘I’m Grade Five now. I started when I was three, didn’t I, Mum? Suzuki method. I do two lessons a week with Madame Poitou – she’s French and she’s a lot better than my old teacher. She says I’ve got a good ear, but I’m a bit lazy. I have to practise every day for forty minutes. Not much good at anything else, except swimming. Butterfly, I’m really good at butterfly. Oh, yes, and I like sailing too. Dad’s got a friend who works at the radio station with him, and he’s got a twenty-six footer called Seaventure. He keeps it down at the marina. We went all the way down the coast, didn’t we, Mum? Dartmouth or somewhere. Bit rough, but it was great.’

‘Nothing like it,’ he said, nodding away. ‘Nothing like the sea. “I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky . . .” you know that poem, do you? Not true, of course. You’re never lonely at sea. It’s people that make you feel lonely, don’t you think? You like poetry, do you? Always liked poems, I have. I’ve got dozens of them up here in my head.’

My mother spoke up suddenly: ‘How did you know where to find us? How did you know?’

‘It was luck, just luck. It wasn’t as if I was looking for him. It just happened. I was at home, a couple of weeks ago, and I had the radio on. Had it on for the weather, matter of fact. I always listen to the weather. I heard him, on that programme he does in the mornings. I didn’t recognise his voice of course, but there was something about how he said what he said that I had to listen to. And then I heard his name. “Arthur Stevens’ Morning Chat”, they called it. I’m not a fool. I knew well enough there was likely to be more than one Arthur Stevens in the world, I knew that. But I just had this feeling, like it was a meant-to-be thing. Do you understand what I’m saying? It was like we were supposed to meet up again after all this time.

‘So, the same afternoon it was, I went and had a look. I walked right in the front door of the radio station. And there he was, larger than life up on the wall, a huge great smiling poster of him. I took one look and, I’m telling you, I didn’t have to read the signature across the bottom. It was him. Same big ears, same cheeky smile, same little Arthur. Just fifty years older, that’s all. Couldn’t mistake him. And then, whilst I was standing there looking up at him, he comes right past me, close enough I could’ve reached out and touched him. And I wanted to, believe me I wanted to; but I couldn’t, I didn’t dare. Then he was gone out of the door and it was too late.’

He swept the biscuit crumbs up into a little pile with his finger, and went on. ‘Anyway, after that I came over all giddy in the head. I get that from time to time. I had to sit down to steady myself, and there was this young lady at the desk who helped me. She was nice too. She brought me a glass of water. I reckon she was a bit worried about me. After a bit, we got talking, her and me. I asked her about Arthur and she told me all about him – and about the two of you as well. She said how good he is to work with, how he cares about what he does. “Never stops,” she said. “Works himself to a frazzle.” She told me about all the shows he does, how they phone in with all their cares and woes, and how he talks to them and makes them feel better about themselves. “You should listen in some time,” she said. So I did. I’ve heard every one of his programmes ever since – never missed. Not once. Plays my kind of music too.’

He was looking at us hard. ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m maybe a bit crazed in the head, a bit barmy. Well, maybe I am at that. Maybe I shouldn’t have come at all. I’ve got no business being here, I suppose, not really, not after all these years.’ His eyes were welling with tears. ‘It was an agreement, a sort of understanding, between Arthur’s mother and me. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame her – I wasn’t much good to her, I know that now. One day she just said she’d had enough. She was leaving and she was taking young Arthur with her. She wanted a fresh start, she said. There was this other man – these things happen. Anyway it wasn’t nasty, nothing like that. It’d be best all round if I stayed out of it, she said, best for the boy. He’d soon get used to a new father. So I said I’d keep away, for the boy’s sake. And that’s what I’ve done. I kept my promise, and it wasn’t easy sometimes, I can tell you. A father always wants to know how his son’s grown up. So I never went looking; but when I heard his name on the radio, well, like I said, I thought it was a meant thing. And here I am. He sounded grand on the radio, just grand.’ He brushed away the tears with the back of his hand. He had massively broad hands, brown and engrained with dirt. ‘It took me two weeks thinking about it, and then a whole day standing out there in the rain before I could bring myself to knock on the door.’

He composed himself again before he went on. He was looking directly at my mother. ‘I haven’t come to bother you, nor him. I promise. I just wanted to see him, see you all, and then I’ll be on my way.’

My mother glanced up at the kitchen clock. ‘Well, I’m afraid he’s not going to be home for quite a while yet. Half an hour at least, maybe longer.’ Then, quite suddenly, she snapped into teacher mode again – positive, confident, organising. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Cessie, you can go and run a bath.’

‘What?’ Sometimes I just could not understand her at all. Why on earth should I have a bath all of a sudden, and before supper too?

‘Not for you, Cessie, for Mr Stevens.’ She clapped her hands at me. ‘Go on, hop to it. And he’ll need a towel too, from the airing cupboard – the big green one. We can’t have Mr Stevens sitting around in those wet clothes till your father comes home, can we now? He’ll catch his death.’

‘Not Mr Stevens, please. Popsicle. I’m Popsicle,’ my grandfather said quietly. ‘I’d like it very much if you’d call me Popsicle. It’s what everyone calls me. It’s what I’m used to.’

My mother had been interrupted in full flow, but she was only momentarily taken aback. ‘Popsicle it is then,’ she said, and she bustled me out of the kitchen. ‘I’ll look out some of Arthur’s clothes for you,’ I heard her telling him as I went up the stairs. ‘They’ll be a bit on the large side, I shouldn’t wonder. We’ll have those wet things of yours dry in a jiffy.’ She was talking to him as if she’d known him for years, as if he was one of the family.

I was thinking about that as I ran the bath, but it wasn’t until I was fetching the towel from the airing cupboard that it began to sink in, that I began to understand what all this really meant. Until then I had believed it, but I hadn’t felt it. I had a new grandfather. Out of nowhere I had a new grandfather! A flush of sudden joy surged through me. As I watched him coming slowly up the stairs, hauling himself up by the banisters, all I wanted to do was to throw my arms round his neck and hug him. I waited until he reached the top, and then I did it. He looked a bit bewildered. I’d taken him by surprise but I think he was pleased all the same.

‘Do you have a loofah, Cessie?’ he asked me. ‘I don’t have baths very often. Bit difficult where I live. Bit cramped. Never enough water either. But when I do have a bath I always have my loofah.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘It’s a sort of backscrubber. Reaches the parts you can’t reach otherwise.’

‘I don’t think we’ve got one,’ I laughed. ‘But you can have a duck, if you want. I’ve got a yellow plastic one called Patsy. Had it ever since I was little.’

‘What more could a fellow want?’ He smiled at me as I handed him the towel. ‘Tell you what, Cessie, why don’t you give us a tune on that fiddle of yours, eh? Same tune you were playing when I was out in the street. I liked that. I liked that a lot. You could do me a sort of serenade in the bath.’

So, with my bedroom door open, I serenaded him with Handel’s Largo. I could hear him humming away and splashing next door in the bathroom. I was playing so well, I was so wrapped up in it, that at first I didn’t notice my mother standing at the door of my room. I could tell she’d been listening for some time. When I stopped playing she said, ‘You play so well, Cessie. When you mean it, you play so well.’ She came over and sat down on my bed. ‘I don’t know what it is. I don’t feel right in myself,’ she said. ‘Shock, I suppose. I can’t explain it. It’s like someone’s just walked over my grave.’ I sat down beside her. She seemed to want me to. ‘It is him, you know,’ she went on. ‘I can see your dad in his face, in his gestures. You can’t fake that.’ She was hugging herself. ‘Maybe I’m frightened, Cessie.’

‘Of him?’

‘No, of course not. Of what might happen when your dad gets back. I don’t understand. I just don’t know what to make of it. I mean he’ll talk occasionally about his mum, and, very occasionally, about his stepfather too. But in all the time I’ve known him I don’t think he’s ever said a single word to me about his real dad. It’s as if he never existed, like he was almost a non-person. Perhaps I should have asked, but I always felt it was . . . well . . . like forbidden territory, almost as if there was something to hide, something he didn’t want to remember. I don’t know, I don’t know; but what I do know is that any minute now your dad’s going to walk in this house, and I’m going to have to tell him his father’s here. It’s going to be a big surprise, but I’m not sure what kind of surprise, that’s all.’

‘I’ll tell him, if you like,’ I said. I didn’t make the offer just to help her out. I offered because I wanted to be quite sure I was there when he was told, that this wouldn’t be one of those private, important things they went out into the garden to discuss earnestly. Popsicle may be my father’s father, but when all was said and done, he was my grandfather not theirs.

My mother put her hand on mine. ‘We’ll do it together, shall we?’

That was the moment we heard the front door open, and then slam. My father always slammed the door. It was part of his homecoming ritual. He’d toss the car keys next.

‘Anyone home?’ We heard the car keys land on the hall table. He was walking into the kitchen. ‘Anyone home?’

I don’t know who was squeezing whose hand the harder as we walked together along the landing past the bathroom door. We went down the stairs side by side, holding hands, and into the kitchen, holding hands. My father had his back to us. He was by the sink pouring himself a can of beer. He turned round and took a couple of deep swigs. I had never noticed how big his ears were, but I noticed now. I had to smile in spite of myself. My mother was right. You could see Popsicle in him. He was younger of course, and without the long, yellow hair, but they were so alike.

He smothered a burp and patted his chest. ‘Pardon me,’ he said. ‘Throat’s as dry as a bone.’

‘It’s all that talking you do,’ my mother said, clearing her throat nervously.

‘What’s up?’ He was looking at us, from one to the other. We looked back. ‘Nothing the matter, is there? You all right, Cessie?’ I looked away.

My mother began clearing the table, busily. She wasn’t a very convincing actress. ‘So,’ she said, ‘so you won’t be wanting a cup of tea then, not after a beer.’

My father was looking down at the kitchen table. He was counting the mugs, I was sure of it. ‘Seems like tea’s over and done with anyway. You been having a party, have you?’ I smiled weakly. I could think of nothing to say.

‘Cessie’s done her violin practice.’ My mother was prattling now. ‘And I have to say that she’s playing the Largo quite beautifully.’ She was bent over the table, wiping it down, but with far too much enthusiasm. As I watched her I could see she was never going to be able to bring herself even to look at him, let alone to break the news. I was bursting to tell him, but I didn’t know how to begin. I couldn’t find the words. I couldn’t just blurt it out, could I? I couldn’t say: ‘Your long lost father’s come back to see you. He’s upstairs having a bath, with Patsy.’

I was still trying to work out how to tell him, when we heard the bathroom door open, and slow, heavy footfalls coming down the stairs.

‘Who’s that?’ My father had put down his beer. He knew now for sure that there was some sort of conspiracy going on.

‘Are you in there? Are you in the kitchen?’ Popsicle was talking all the time as he came down the stairs, as he came across the hallway towards the kitchen. ‘The clothes are fine. Jacket’s bit big in the sleeve. I may look like a right old scarecrow, but at least I’m a clean old scarecrow now, and warm too. Warmed right through, I am. Best bath I’ve had in years. And it’s been a very long time, I can tell you, since I had a bath with a duck. Friendly sort of a duck too, never leaves you alone. Always nibbling at something.’

The kitchen door opened. My father looked at his father. My grandfather looked at his son.

3 BARNARDO’S BOYS

POPSICLE SHUFFLED FORWARD, HESITANTLY, offering his hand as he came, but my father didn’t take it, not at first. Even when he did, it was obvious to me that he had little idea whose hand he was shaking. But he knew he should know. He wanted help. He needed someone to tell him who this was. So I told him.

‘He’s your dad.’ I said it straight out. It seemed the only way.

‘You don’t recognise me, do you, Arthur?’ Popsicle held on to my father’s hand for a moment longer. ‘Why should you? Been fifty years, near enough. Last time I saw you was in Bradwell, in the village. You were catching a bus across the road from the church, a green bus, I remember that. You and your mum were off to live in Maldon, just down the coast. You were looking out the back window and you were waving. Never saw you again after that, nor your mum.’

Still my father said nothing. He seemed to be in some kind of a trance, incapable of movement, incapable of speech. I had never seen him like this and it frightened me.

My mother was trying to explain. ‘He heard you on the radio, Arthur,’ she said. ‘And then he went to the radio station. He saw your picture on the wall. Recognised you right away, didn’t you, Popsicle?’

‘Bradwell-on-Sea?’ My father spoke at last.

Popsicle nodded. ‘Remember the house, do you, Arthur? Down by the quay, next to the Green Man. Good pub that. Too good.’

My father said nothing more. The silence was becoming long and awkward. I suppose I had been anticipating a joyous reunion, huge hugs, tears even. I certainly hadn’t expected this. My father was usually so spontaneous. This wasn’t like him at all.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t have come, Arthur,’ said Popsicle at last. ‘Not without warning you anyway. I should have written a letter perhaps. That would’ve been better. Well, maybe I’d better be off then.’ And he turned away towards the door.

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ said my mother firmly. She had Popsicle by the arm now. ‘No one’s going anywhere. If this man is who he says he is, then there’s more than just the two of you involved in this. There’s Cessie and there’s me.’ She sat Popsicle down on a kitchen chair, none too gently. Then she stood behind him, hands on his shoulders, facing my father.

‘Well, Arthur, we need to know. Is this your father, or isn’t it?’

My father took his time before replying. ‘Yes.’ He spoke softly, so softly I could hardly hear him. ‘I remember the bus. The window was steamed up and I had to rub a hole in it to see him. I wasn’t waving, not exactly.’

‘Maybe Cessie and I should just leave you both alone for a while. There’ll be a fair bit you want to talk about, I shouldn’t wonder. We’ll make ourselves scarce. Come along, Cessie.’

I was reluctant to go, but it looked as if I had no choice. I was being ushered out of the door when my father called us back.

‘Don’t go,’ he said, and he said it in such a way that I knew he needed us.

My mother was the life and soul of that first gathering around the kitchen table. She brought out the sloe gin. ‘Only for very special occasions, very special people,’ she said, opening the bottle. ‘Five years old. Should be perfect. Not every day a father turns up out of the blue.’

‘Nor a grandfather,’ I added. I was allowed a taste, but that was all. Popsicle emptied his glass in one gulp and declared that it was ‘beautiful’. My father was watching him, scrutinising him all the while, but it was a long time before he said anything.

‘I went back, you know.’ My father spoke up suddenly. He was looking into his glass. He still hadn’t touched a drop.

‘Back where?’ Popsicle asked.

‘Bradwell. To our house.’

‘What for?’

‘I went looking for you. After Mum died, I ran off. But you weren’t there. I asked in the pub, but you’d gone, years before, they said.’

‘She’s dead, Arthur? Your mum’s dead?’

‘A long time ago,’ said my father.

‘I never knew, Arthur. Honest to God, I never knew.’ His face seemed suddenly very sunken and exhausted. ‘When? How?’

‘I was ten. Boating accident. They were both drowned, her and Bill. No one knows what happened, not really. They looked for you. Well, they told me they did anyway, but no one could find you. They packed me off to a home, a children’s home. Nothing else they could do, I suppose. That’s when I ran off back to Bradwell. They caught me of course. Brought me back. A Dr Barnardo’s place it was, by the sea. Wasn’t home exactly, but it wasn’t too bad.’ He took a sip of sloe gin, and then, looking directly across the table at Popsicle, he went on: ‘Do you know what I’d do sometimes? Summer evenings, I’d sit on the brick wall by the gate and wait for you. I really thought that one day you’d come back and take me away. I was sure of it.’

Popsicle seemed suddenly breathless. He clutched at the table for support. ‘You all right?’ my mother asked, crouching down beside him.

‘I’m fine, fine,’ said Popsicle.

‘Sure?’

Popsicle put a hand to his neck. ‘There’s a thing,’ he said. ‘Be funny if it weren’t so sad. Runs in the family. Father and son, both of us Barnardo’s boys. There’s a thing, there’s a thing.’

Without any warning at all he slumped forward off the chair. His head smashed against the corner of the table and hit the floor at my feet with a sickening, hollow crack. There was blood at once.

I had always longed to be in an ambulance on an emergency dash to hospital. When I’d twisted my ankle I’d gone by car and there had been no drama at all, no excitement. But with Popsicle it was the real thing. The ambulance arrived at the house, lights flashing, sirens wailing. Green-overalled paramedics came dashing into the house. They were struggling to save a life under my very eyes.

As he lay there, crumpled on the kitchen floor, all the colour drained from his face, Popsicle looked very dead. I couldn’t detect any sign of breathing. And there was so much blood. The paramedics felt him, listened to him, injected him and put a mask on his face. They told us again and again not to worry, that everything would be all right.

They stretchered him out to the waiting ambulance, where the radio was crackling with messages, and around which a dozen or more of our neighbours were gathered. Mandy Bethel was there, Shirley Watson’s scandal-mongering sidekick from school, so I knew the news would be all over the estate in no time. Mr Goldsmith from next door was there too. And Mrs Martin from across the road, who’d hardly even spoken to me before, put her arm round my shoulder and asked me who it was that was ill. ‘My grandfather,’ I said, and I said it very proudly, and very loudly too, so that everyone should hear.

Then we all climbed into the ambulance with him and we were driven away at speed, sirens wailing. I only wished they hadn’t closed the doors, because I should have liked to have seen their faces for a little longer, especially Mandy Bethel’s. I felt suddenly very important, very much at the centre of things.

It was only when I was inside the ambulance and looking down at Popsicle, deathly white under the scarlet of the blanket, that I realised this was not a performance at all. Suddenly it was serious and I could think only that I didn’t want Popsicle to die. I didn’t say prayers all that often, only when I really needed to. I needed to now, badly. I had just found myself a grandfather, or he had found me, and I did not want to lose him. So I sat in the ambulance and prayed, with my eyes closed tight. My mother thought I was crying and hugged me to her. That was when she began blaming herself.

‘Maybe it was the bath,’ she said. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have made him have a bath. Maybe we should have warmed him up more slowly.’ And later: ‘He was soaked to the skin, he was shivering. And I just left him sitting there, all that time, in those wet things.’

‘It wasn’t you,’ said my father. ‘It was me. I shouldn’t have told him about Mum, not straight out like that. I didn’t think.’

We sat in casualty at St Margaret’s until the early hours of the morning. When I’d come before with my ankle it had been busy, full of interesting injuries. This time there was hardly anyone there to distract me. I tried not to think of Popsicle. I kept picturing him lying there under a white sheet not breathing, not moving. I flicked through all the Hello! magazines, all the National Geographics and the Readers Digests I could find, but I was quite unable to concentrate on any of them. My mother and father both sat grey-faced, like stony statues, and didn’t speak to each other, nor to me.

We hadn’t had supper and I was hungry. I begged some change off my mother and fed the vending machine. There wasn’t much to choose from. I had a meal of Coca Cola, chocolate biscuits and two packets of cheese and onion crisps. I was feeling a bit queasy by the time the doctor finally came to see us.

She was a lot younger than I thought doctors could ever be. She wore jeans and a T-shirt under her white coat, and twiddled her dangling stethoscope around her fingers as if it was a necklace. She smiled an encouraging smile at me, and I knew then that the news was going to be good news. Popsicle was not going to die after all. I wasn’t going to lose him. I felt like whooping with joy, but I couldn’t, not in a hospital.

‘How is he?’ my mother asked.

‘Stable. We think he’s had a stroke, a mild stroke. We’d like to keep him in for a while under observation. We’ll do some tests. All being well, he can go back home in a couple of weeks or so. He’ll need a bit of looking after. He lives with you, does he?’

‘Not really,’ said my father. ‘Not exactly.’

My mother looked at him meaningfully.

‘Well,’ my father went on, ‘perhaps he does. For the moment anyway.’

The doctor was looking from one to the other in some bewilderment. ‘I’m afraid he does seem to have lost some movement in his right side. But given time that should right itself. For a man of his age I’d say he has a very strong constitution. He’s very fit. But there is one other thing. He’s got a very nasty head wound – fractured his skull in two places. We won’t know the extent of the damage – if any – for a while yet. Another reason for keeping a good eye on him.’

‘Can we see him?’ I asked.

Her bleeper went off. ‘No peace for the wicked,’ she said. ‘The nurse will show you the way.’ I watched her walk off down the corridor and decided that if I didn’t end up as a concert violinist, or a round-the-world singlehanded yachtswoman, then I’d be a doctor like her – maybe.

Popsicle was lying in a bed surrounded by a fearsome array of monitors and drips. There was a tube in his nose and another in his arm. His hair was gold against the white of the pillows. There was a wide strip of plaster across his forehead, and a dark grey bruise round his eye. He wasn’t a pretty sight, but at least the dreadful pallor had gone. He was asleep and breathing deeply, regularly, his mouth wide open. He must have sensed we were there. His eyes opened. For some moments he looked from one to the other of us. He didn’t seem to know who we were.

‘Not angryla,’ he murmured, looking around him. He was more than bewildered, he was frightened, and agitated too. ‘Not angryla.’ He wasn’t making much sense.

‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Cessie. It’s all right. You had an accident. You’re in hospital. It’s all right.’ At that he seemed to calm down, and a sudden smile came over his face.

He knew us. He knew me. He beckoned me closer. I bent over him. I was so close I could feel his breath on my cheek. ‘See what happens if you eat too many chocolate digestives.’

‘It was the sloe gin,’ I said, and he managed a smile.

My mother was beside me and taking his hand. ‘You’ve had a bit of a turn,’ she said. She was speaking slowly, deliberately and loudly too, as if he were deaf. ‘The doctor says you’ll be right as rain. We’ll come and see you tomorrow, shall we?’ Popsicle lifted his hand and touched his forehead. ‘You clunked your head, when you fell. You’ll have a bit of a shiner too, a black eye. You’ll be all right, Popsicle, you’ll be fine.’

Popsicle was looking up at my father, trying to lift his head, trying to say something to him. ‘Popsicle. You remember, Arthur? It’s what you used to call me when you were little. D’you remember?’

‘Yes,’ said my father.

‘And you had big ears in those days too,’

‘Did I?’

‘And you still have,’ Popsicle chuckled just once, and then drifted off to sleep. My father stood there looking down at him. He reached down, took Popsicle’s hand and laid it tenderly on the sheet. His hands so wrinkled, so ancient.

‘Let’s go home,’ he said, and he turned on his heel and walked out of the ward without another word.

By the time we got home there wasn’t much of the night left, but I spent what there was quite unable to sleep. I kept going over and over in my mind everything that had happened that day. I knew as I lay there in bed that my ordinary life was over, that from now on everything was going to be extraordinary. Popsicle had come out of nowhere, out of the blue, to be my grandfather; and nothing and no one would or could ever be the same again.

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