EGMONT PRESS: ETHICAL PUBLISHING

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Also by Michael Morpurgo

Arthur: High King of Britain

Escape from Shangri-La

Friend or Foe

The Ghost of Grania O’Malley

Kensuke’s Kingdom

King of the Cloud Forests

Little Foxes

Long Way Home

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

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

For Anthony, Sue, Alexander, Christopher and Nicholas.

Acknowledgements

CHAPTER ONE

HARRY WAS ALONE WITH HIS THOUGHTS. THERE may have been over two hundred children with him in the playground, but he was quite alone. Maybe it would be today, maybe tomorrow – unless of course something went wrong, and something still could go wrong. Harry knew it was wicked even to think of that let alone to hope for it. But he could not stop himself. He was hoping for it hard.

‘We need a goalie!’ Peter Barker was bellowing at him from across the playground. Harry turned away. Peter Barker sat next to him in the choir at St Cuthbert’s and swapped Turf cigarette cards with him (the ones with the big-headed footballers). Father Murphy’s sermons ran on a bit on a Sunday morning and the surreptitious exchanges between the folds of the surplices added sinful spice to the dealing: one Tom Finney for one Billy Wright it was, last Sunday.

‘Come on, Harry.’ Peter was waving him over. ‘We’ve got no one else.’ They were all shouting at him now. He had no choice.

The goal he had to defend was twice the width it should have been, between the two uprights of the rusting chainlink fence with the wilderness of the bomb site behind him. It was fair enough, though, because the other goal was every bit as wide, stretching as it did between the two drainpipes on the lavatory block wall. They often chose Harry for goalkeeper – he wasn’t good for much else. He knew he wouldn’t have much to do, so he leaned back against the fence and slipped easily into his thoughts.

‘An evil thought is a sin in itself, Harry.’ That was what Father Murphy had told him in Confession. If that were so, and Harry believed most of what Father Murphy told him, then Harry’s heap of sins was piling up fast. He must not allow himself to think about it any more. Instead he would think of Bournemouth. He could always banish his miseries by thinking his way back to Bournemouth. He’d done it often enough over the last two years, ever since Bill came to live with them.

*

Bournemouth was the last time Harry had been happy.

He remembered every hour of it, every minute of it. The war had just finished and they did what his mother had always promised they would do as soon as it was over. They took the train from London down to Bournemouth to spend a week by the sea. All his life he’d wanted to see where the trains went to that steamed past the church and under the bridge beyond the allotments. And now, gazing out of the window, he’d seen the steeple and the graveyard flash past before they thundered under the bridge and were away. His mother sat beside him in her best brown suit, serene in the noise and the smoke of the carriage with the soldiers in their great boots and gaiters laughing their way home, the war done with.

‘Your old man in the Air Force, is he?’ one of them asked noticing the winged brooch Harry’s mother always wore on her brown suit.

‘He was,’ she said and left it at that. The soldiers quietened, looking at each other and wincing at their own awkwardness, and Harry felt that surge of pride as he always did whenever his father was spoken of. He smiled up at his mother and she held his hand and squeezed it. There was no grief left, not after four years, only a sense of shared loss that bound them together. Harry hardly remembered his father but his photo was on the mantelpiece in the sitting room, the medal lying beside it.

‘Fine boy you’ve got there,’ said the soldier, taking a bar of chocolate out of his breast pocket.

‘I think so,’ said Harry’s mother, smiling.

‘Do you eat chocolate, son?’

‘Ask a silly question,’ Harry’s mother said, and the carriage laughed again and rocked rhythmically as everyone ate chocolate all the way to Bournemouth.

To a great leaping cheer, Harry’s team scored a goal against the lavatory wall, but it was hotly disputed because the goalkeeper said it had hit the guttering above his head. He held up a piece of the gutter as evidence and a long wrangle ensued before the goal was finally allowed.

Harry smiled and thought of Bournemouth, of number twenty-two Seaview Terrace; of Mrs Coleman, the landlady – ‘Call me Aunty Ivy,’ she had said – and the little room he had shared with his mother. He remembered the stories his mother had read him in bed, the smell of clean sheets, and the sparrows squabbling outside their window. Then there was the day they had built the sandcastle with its ramparts and towers, with its great cuttleshell walls – hundreds of them they had collected – so that it should be forever impregnable against the sea. He could see now the great moat they had engineered and the driftwood plank that served as a drawbridge. He had stood on the drawbridge and watched the sea surge up the beach and into the moat under his feet only to be held at bay by the cuttleshell walls. Then with the darkness falling and the swifts screaming low over the beach, they had planted a flag in the tower and left the beach behind them, their sandcastle an island now but still standing. And then came the two black dogs with wildly whirling tails, cavorting through the shallows. They stopped by the castle to investigate and decided this was just the place to dig. Perhaps it was the only soft sand they could find. No shrieks, no yells could shift them as they dug in the sand with crazed abandon. Within seconds the castle was reduced to a formless pile of sand. ‘Perhaps they were after sea rabbits,’ Harry’s mother said, as they walked home happy with laughter.

Home was Aunty Ivy’s white-painted villa with the green balconies all around, where the food always filled your plate to the edges and where there always seemed to be more. ‘Haven’t you heard of rationing?’ Harry’s mother asked.

‘Rationing, dear? Never heard of it,’ laughed Aunty Ivy, and she tapped her nose conspiratorially. ‘We have our ways,’ she said, ‘and that’s all I’m saying.’

It was Aunty Ivy that made up the picnic baskets they took with them each day to the sea or to the cliffs. Harry’s mother preferred to eat lunch away from the sand of the beach, so they walked the cliffs searching for the right spot. They would spread out the red-checked cloth, feast themselves on sausage rolls and digestive biscuits, and look down at the gulls and fulmars floating below them on the air.

They were on their way back from the beach one evening when his mother stopped to watch the very last of the sun disappear into the sea. ‘That’s where your father’s plane went down, Harry,’ she said. ‘He’s out there somewhere. Still, no one could have a better grave, could they?’ She put her arm round him and pulled him close. ‘We mustn’t ever forget him, Harry.’

‘Harry!’ The cry came in unison, a cry of dismay and anger. Harry never even saw the ball. He heard it crashing against the wire mesh above his head and felt the crumbs of rust fall on his neck as he ducked. Recriminations were sharp but mercifully brief, because everyone knew there were only a few short minutes left until the end of break. He conjured up Bournemouth again, although he didn’t really want to, not any more. It was like a recurring dream that you have to finish even though you know it ends badly.

The day on the pier was the day it all went wrong for Harry. A fierce gale was whipping the beach into angry sand squalls so that no one could stay there for long that morning. The cliffs were shrouded in cloud so they ate their picnic in a bus shelter and then, tucking the cloth back into the basket, they made for the pier. Harry said he wanted to walk all the way to the end, and so they did, hanging onto the rail and to each other to save themselves from being blown across to the other side. They laughed aloud in the wind and the spray as the waves seethed below them and crashed against the pier. They had reached the end and were breathless with the wildness of it all when the cloth from the picnic basket was whipped out by the wind and flew off down the pier wrapping itself around the rails some fifty yards away. Harry went racing after it but someone was there before him. A tall man he was, with glasses. He had the cloth in his hands. ‘Not sure you should be out here on your own,’ he said as Harry took the cloth from him, and his mother came running up.

‘He’s not on his own,’ said Harry’s mother, ‘he’s with me.’

‘Even so I think it’s a bit risky, don’t you? Here, let me help you.’ He took the basket. ‘Come on, take an arm each and hang on.’

They did not need his help and Harry knew it; and what was worse, Harry knew his mother knew it, but she took his arm just the same. Harry had no choice. He followed her example and clung to the man’s arm all the way back down the shuddering pier as the waves broke over it, showering them with sea-spray so cold that it took the breath from their bodies. In the shelter of a tearoom the man took off his glasses, shook out his coat, and introduced himself. ‘I’m Bill Wesley,’ he said, holding out his hand to Harry’s mother, and she was smiling at him as she took his hand.

In the days that followed Harry hardly saw his mother. It was Aunty Ivy who built sandcastles with him now and pushed him on the swing in the front garden. ‘If I’d had a little boy I’d have wanted him to be just like you, pet,’ she told him, ‘but Mr Coleman and me, we weren’t blessed.’ Harry wasn’t sure what she meant by that. It was Aunty Ivy and not his mother who read bedtime stories to him, kissed him goodnight and tucked him up leaving the door open for the light. He heard her tell his mother one morning out in the passage, ‘I’ll look after the boy for you, it’ll be a treat for me. I’ve always wanted one of my own, you know. You go and enjoy yourself with your young man. You’re only young once.’ And so every morning after breakfast Bill Wesley would come, and his mother would say to Harry, ‘You don’t mind, do you, dear? Aunty Ivy will look after you. I’ll be back before bedtime.’ But she never was.

On the last day at breakfast his mother said that Billy – she called him ‘Billy’ now – wanted to take them both on a boat trip. ‘He wants to get to know you a bit,’ she said. Harry told her he wasn’t feeling very well – he was sure she wouldn’t go if he wasn’t well. But his ruse backfired on him. Aunty Ivy put her warm hand on his forehead and said she thought he might well have a fever coming on and that perhaps he ought not to go out, that she would be quite happy to look after him. So his mother went out with Bill Wesley on the boat without him.

Harry watched them from his bed through Aunty Ivy’s binoculars. He watched them out in their bobbing boat until his anger made him cry. Aunty Ivy said she understood.

She cuddled him close and kissed him. ‘It’ll be all right, pet. I’ll take care of you. If you ever need a friend your Aunty Ivy will always be here. Come on, cheer up. She’s a pretty woman, your mother. Only natural she’d take up with someone one day. Nice young man he is too – works in a bank, he tells me. A woman doesn’t want to stay a widow all her life – believe me, pet. She should get married again. Only natural.’

And that’s just what happened only a few months later in St Cuthbert’s. They had the reception in the church hall afterwards. Harry was there, lost in the legs of the wedding guests. ‘Are you happy for me, Harry?’ his mother asked him. She was wearing the brown suit, but the winged brooch wasn’t there any more. Harry nodded.

‘Doesn’t look very happy to me,’ said Bill, bending down and ruffling his hair. ‘I’ll be looking after you both now, Harry.’

‘Give us a smile, Harry dear,’ his mother said through her tears. Harry smiled, but just to please her. She kissed him and whispered, ‘It’ll be all right, you’ll see.’

But it was not all right. Nothing was ever to be all right after that.

*

‘Harryyyy!’ Harry started out of his dream too late and the ball rolled past his outstretched foot and through a hole in the fence behind him. They were all shouting at him, Peter Barker amongst them. ‘What’s the matter with you, Harry?’ he said, rushing up to him. ‘You didn’t even try. We just lost and it’s all because of you. You’d better fetch the ball, and quick. The bell’s going any second.’

There was a system for getting the ball back if it went through or over the fence into the bomb site. Everyone knew it was absolutely forbidden to go in there. Mr Quigley, the headmaster, had told them often enough – the walls were dangerous and there could even be unexploded bombs. Of course no one really believed that. A dozen or more children gathered around the hole in the fence to form a protective screen so that no one could see what was happening from the school windows. ‘But why me?’ asked Harry.

‘You let the goal in, didn’t you?’ said Peter Barker. There was no answer to that.

‘Anyone about?’ Harry asked, looking for any lurking teachers on playground duty.

‘All clear,’ said Peter, turning Harry towards the hole and pushing him downwards.

Harry scrambled through and had just grabbed the ball when he heard the bell. He turned quickly and was crawling back when he felt his jumper catch on the fence. He looked up and called for someone to help free him. They had all gone, every last one of them, and Miss Hardcastle was striding across the playground towards him, the bell in her hand. Harry felt his jersey tear, and then his trousers, as Miss Hardcastle took him by the shoulder and dragged him back through the hole.

Miss Hardcastle was known to everyone as The Dragon, and with good reason. To get caught by any teacher in the bombsite was bad enough. It usually meant a dressing-down in Mr Quigley’s study as well as several hundred lines and a letter to take home; but to get caught by The Dragon was always a deal more painful. She dealt with things herself and in her own special way. When The Dragon hit you she meant to hurt you. Harry knew that only too well as he was marched along the corridor and into the classroom.

They were all sitting there in awed silence, guilty witnesses of what was about to happen. Not one of them dared to look him in the face except Peter, who shrugged his shoulders and apologised with his eyes. Harry dreaded the ritual but he was determined not to show it. He held out his hand, praying fervently it would be the flat of the ruler across the open hand this time.

‘How many times have you been told, Harry Hawkins, that the bombsite is out of bounds?’ Harry said nothing. It was better that way, over with quicker. You didn’t argue with The Dragon, not if you knew what was good for you. ‘You do know the bombsite is out of bounds, I suppose?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘Then why did you go in there?’

‘To fetch the ball, Miss.’

‘So you quite deliberately broke a school rule, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, Miss.’ The worst bit was the waiting. Harry’s mouth was dry with fear and the backs of his legs were sweating.

‘Deliberate defiant disobedience.’ The Dragon was working herself into a temper with every word. She grabbed his fingers and turned his hand over, knuckles uppermost. He knew now he had to expect the worst. ‘Perhaps this will persuade you to do as you’re told in the future.’ And she reached for the long ruler from the top of her desk. ‘And there’ll be a letter to take back to your father.’

‘He’s not my father,’ Harry said quietly.

‘What did you say?’

‘He’s not my father. My father’s dead.’

‘Oh yes, of course, I forgot,’ and her lips curled with acid sarcasm. ‘We all know Harry Hawkins’ father, don’t we, the great war hero, the great fighter pilot. You’ve told us often enough, haven’t you?’

‘He wasn’t fighter pilot, Miss. He was a navigator in a bomber and . . .’

‘Are you arguing with me?’ Her lips were tight with fury. ‘Are you?’

‘No, Miss.’ Harry knew he was stupid to have started it, but he would not let anyone call Bill his father, not even The Dragon. He winced in spite of himself as she tightened her hold on his wrist and pulled his hand out. He saw her tongue gripped between her teeth and watched the ruler swinging upwards. He did not try to pull away. He’d done that before. She just added another stroke every time he’d tried. His fingers curled involuntarily as the ruler came down, sharp edge first. With the hollow crack came the pain shooting all through him. ‘Maybe this!’ Again the ruler came down, again and then again. ‘Maybe this will teach you. And this! And this!’ Harry looked at her, his eyes hard with defiance. She dropped his wrist. ‘And don’t you dare look at me like that, Harry Hawkins, else there’ll be more.’ But Harry had no choice. His mouth and his eyes were full of tears that he must not let out. To blink would have been to release them. So he glared up at her, his huge eyes pools of dark anger. Miss Hardcastle seemed suddenly troubled and looked away, muttering to Harry to go and sit down and that he must come to pick up his letter from the staffroom before he went home. It was over.

The last thirty minutes of school were spent writing out in loopy writing, ‘The quality of mercy is not strained’ in their copy books. Harry’s hand hurt so much that he could scarcely hold the pencil. He could not see for the tears in his eyes, tears that despite all he could do dropped from time to time onto his copy book. He would wipe them away before they had time to soak into the paper and hope that no one had noticed, but everyone had. It was a strange thing, but after you’d had a beating from The Dragon, everyone was sympathetic but no one came near you, no one said anything. It was as if you’d suddenly caught an infectious disease of some kind. Harry was grateful for it, though. It meant he didn’t have to talk to anyone. He knew he’d find it difficult to talk and not to cry. He waited until he was alone in the cloakroom. Then and only then he cried. Holding onto the coat pegs, he cried up against the wall and kicked it until there were no more tears left inside him.

Miss Hardcastle was waiting outside the staff-room for him. ‘Haven’t got all day,’ she said, and she handed him the letter. ‘Go straight home now,’ she called after him, ‘and mind the traffic. It’s foggy out there again.’ He was surprised by her concern, by the gentleness in her voice, and looked back at her. For just a flicker of a moment as they looked at one another down the corridor Harry found himself almost believing she was trying to tell him she hadn’t meant all she had said, all she had done; but then the moment passed and he hated her again. ‘Go on, go on,’ she called out, ‘and mind you give it to your stepfather. I’ll be asking him when I see him.’ At least she had called him his stepfather. That was something.

He tied his scarf around his mouth as he stepped out into the smog of the playground. He ran out of the school gates and down the road towards the flashing orange beacons by the pedestrian crossing. He flexed his bruised hand inside his glove and blew on his knuckles to ease the hurt of it. And then he thought of the lectures that would be waiting for him when he got home and handed over the letter, the letter that would say how disobedient and defiant he had been. The lectures would not be from his mother, never from her, always from Bill or Bill’s mother, Granny Wesley, who had a face like an ancient crow. She was always at home these days. She had come to help Harry’s mother out – that was what she said. Harry could see it now. He could hear it now. She’d take one look at his torn jumper and his ripped trousers: ‘No tea for you tonight,’ she’d say. ‘Thoughtless child. How could you, and with your mother in the condition she’s in! Thoughtless.’ Or it could be worse still. Maybe it had already happened. They’d said it could be any day now. Perhaps it was today. He couldn’t go back home and face that, not yet.

He walked on past the Belisha beacons and made for the park. It wasn’t far. Maybe there would be a cigarette packet or two in the wastepaper bin by the bench, always a good place, that, for cigarette cards. It was worth a look, he thought.

Harry found the park gates more by luck than anything else. You could hardly see more than a few yards in front of you, the smog was that thick now. Shadows coughing in the gloom passed him by, and cars and buses crawled along the road, but headlights were all you could see of them.

Harry didn’t see anyone in the park, not until he reached the bench by the duck pond. Someone was sitting there, a man who seemed to be talking to the ducks perhaps, or to himself. ‘Ocky, Ocky. You come out of there, you hear me. It’s dirty. Why you always have to find the dirty places, eh?’ He spoke with a strong foreign accent and then seemed to give up English and broke into a different language altogether. Harry could see the man better now. He was dressed in a long overcoat with a fur collar and he wore a wide-brimmed black hat. When he sat back laughing on the bench he was shaking his head. Harry moved a little closer. There was something rustling in the wastepaper bin beside the bench, but he still could not make out what it was. ‘Ocky! Ocky! I think there’s somebody here,’ the man whispered, leaning forward and peering through the gloom at Harry. ‘You better come out of there, Ocky, before they see you.’ A head came up first out of the wastepaper bin, the head of a black monkey with a pink face and large pink ears that stuck out. And then the rest of it came out and scampered along the bench to sit on the man’s lap. The monkey had a cigarette packet in one hand and a newspaper in the other, and was looking directly at him. Harry wasn’t sure, but it seemed as if the little eyes that stared back at him were flashing yellow.

CHAPTER TWO

‘IS THERE SOMEBODY THERE?’ THE MAN SAID, AND Harry stepped forward. ‘Come closer.’ The man beckoned him towards the bench. ‘Don’t you worry, she won’t hurt you.’ The monkey squatted stock still on the man’s lap, lips pursed, eyes studying Harry as he approached. Harry came as close as he dared. ‘Who is it?’ the man asked.

‘Me,’ Harry said, not taking his eyes off the monkey.

‘Ah, it’s just a bambino.’ He sounded relieved. ‘I don’t see so good in this fog.’ The monkey hooted softly. ‘She want to make friends with you,’ he said, and he laughed. ‘But first I got to introduce you. You got a name?’

‘Harry Hawkins.’

‘Ocky, this is ’Arry ’Awkins. ’Arry ’Awkins, this is Ocky,’ said the man. ‘You got a little something for her, have you? She like the fruit, any kind of fruit. And sweets, she like the barley sugar, ’umbugs. Anything you got.’

Harry fished in his coat pocket. ‘Haven’t got much,’ he said, and produced the only thing he had, an old apple core from the apple his mother had given him for school only yesterday. He held it out, but too fast and the monkey screeched and shrunk back, clinging to the man’s coat.

‘’Arry, you got to be more slow,’ he said. ‘Ocky’s a chimpanzee, and chimpanzees they’re a bit like you and they’re a bit like me. They got to be sure you’re a friend before they like you. So, you got to show ’er you like ’er first. What you got there?’

‘Apple core.’

‘S’good. She like the apples. So you ’old it out, but gently now, and don’t look at her in the eyes. She don’t like it when people look at ’er in the eyes.’ Harry looked deliberately at the waste-paper bin at the end of the bench and offered the apple core, more cautiously this time. He understood then why the chimpanzee’s eyes were flashing yellow, because the wastepaper bin was too – it was the light from the Belisha beacons in the road behind him. It must have been a minute before he saw the chimpanzee move and then she only scratched herself on her shoulder with the cigarette packet. She shifted on the man’s lap and looked up into his face uttering faint whimpers.

‘Va bene, Ocky, va bene,’ said the man and he stroked the chimpanzee on the head. ‘It’s just a bambino. You take the apple, Ocky. It’s a nice one.’ A long black arm stretched out slowly towards him – it was longer than Harry expected – and snatched the apple core. She smelt it first and then bit it in half. It didn’t last long and she seemed disappointed there was no more. She searched avidly in the man’s lap and in her fur for any last bite of apple she might have missed.

‘Say thank you, Ocky,’ said the man, taking the chimpanzee’s hand and holding it out towards Harry. ‘Say “grazie bene”. She got to learn the good manners. You take ’er ’and now, ’Arry. She don’t mind, she’s your friend now.’ The hand felt like soft, cold leather, and it clung now to Harry’s bruised hand with a grip that hurt. The strength of it surprised him. Before he knew it and before he had time to feel alarmed the chimpanzee had swung herself up into the crook of his arm and settled there, an arm around his neck. She was breathing into his ear and had taken the cap off his head.

‘She’s got my cap,’ said Harry, trying to control the fear in his voice. Chuckling, the man on the bench got up and lifted her off him. He handed Harry back his cap.

‘She like to play games, don’t you Ocky?’ he said. ‘You’re a thief, a terrible thief. That’s no way to treat a friend. Now you take me ’ome, Ocky; we got to catch the bus. We got a show tonight, remember.’

‘A show?’

‘Circus, Blondini’s Circus. You never been to the circus before, ’Arry?’

‘No,’ said Harry.

‘So you come, eh? We have all the animals, it’s like Noah’s Ark. We got the horses, we got the dogs, we got the sea lions, we got the elephants and we got the clowns. We got lots of clowns. You like the clowns ’Arry? But best of all we got Ocky – she’s the big star, aren’t you Ocky?’ The chimpanzee reached out again for Harry’s cap but Harry ducked away smartly. ‘You come, eh, bambino? I, Signor Blondini, invite you personally to my circus, and you bring along your friends. You got plenty of friends, eh? I got to go now.’ He coughed and patted his chest. ‘I don’t like this fog, is bad for me. You can’t see so well in it either, but that don’t make no difference to us, does it Ocky? We got each other, eh? We find our way ’ome all right. Look, ’Arry, she’s giving you her cigarette packet. Special present from the wastepaper bin. She like you. She like everyone who is nice to her, all of the animals at the circus, too; but not the dogs. She don’t like the dogs. I don’t know why, but she go crazy when she see the dogs.’

Harry took the offered cigarette packet and then held out his hand slowly. ‘Thanks, Ocky,’ he said. Ocky reached out and touched his hand gently. Then she smelt his fingers, looking all the while into Harry’s eyes, a deep, penetrating stare that forced Harry to look away.

‘Arrivederci, bambino,’ said Signor Blondini lifting his hat. Harry saw then that his hair was silver white. He was a lot older than Harry had imagined from his voice. ‘Andiamo, Ocky, let’s go.’ Ocky took his hand and they walked away together. The chimpanzee turned to look back at him once over her shoulder and Harry saw that she had a cigarette card in her hand. Then they were swallowed in the dark of the smog. Harry looked down at the cigarette pack in his hand and opened it. It was empty.

When he got home Bill and Granny Wesley were sitting in the kitchen. He took his coat off. His tea was waiting for him on the oven, corned beef hash. He hated corned beef hash and said so.

‘Always fussy, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Spoilt, that’s the trouble with you. There’ll be no bread-and-butter pudding until you finish it.’

‘Can I see Mum first?’ he said.

‘The doctor’s with her now, Harry,’ Bill said. ‘You can see her later.’

‘I just want to see her, that’s all.’

‘Later,’ said Bill, an edge to his voice. ‘I’m not even allowed up there now, no one is. Now eat your tea like Granny says, there’s a good lad.’ Harry looked from one to the other. Something was wrong, very wrong. For a start there was no lecture about being late. No one had noticed the tear in his trousers, and Granny Wesley hadn’t even told him to wash his hands before he ate his tea. Perhaps this was a good time to hand over the letter from Miss Hardcastle, he thought.

‘The teacher said I was to give you this,’ he said, taking it out of his pocket and pushing it across the table towards Bill.

‘What is it?’ Bill asked. There were dark, deep rings under his eyes magnified by his glasses.

‘Just a letter,’ said Harry, shrugging. Bill looked down at the envelope but didn’t seem in the slightest bit interested in opening it.

‘Eat up, eat up,’ said Granny Wesley, clapping her hands. Harry ate in silence, glancing from time to time at Bill who kept taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, and then at Granny Wesley who was knitting. She was always knitting, her needles clicking interminably, sometimes in unison with the tick of the kitchen clock.

He was half way through his bread and butter pudding when they heard voices from the room above them. A door shut. Footsteps were coming down the stairs.

Granny Wesley put down her knitting. ‘You stay here and you eat every last bit of it, and don’t forget your orange juice,’ she said as she opened the door into the front hall. Bill went after her, closing the door behind him. The whispering in the front hall was tantalizingly just inaudible. Harry crept to the door and put his ear to the keyhole. He could still hear no better, so he looked instead. The doctor was in his shirtsleeves and braces and was standing at the foot of the stairs. Bill was listening, head lowered, and Granny Wesley was nodding and looking at her watch. After a few moments she turned away and came back towards the kitchen door. Harry scuttled back to the table and bolted down the last of his bread-and-butter pudding. The whispering was louder now and he could just make out what they were saying. It was Bill’s voice.

‘I don’t care what you do with him . . . I want him out of here . . . for as long as possible.’ Then the door opened and Granny Wesley came in alone.

‘Can’t I see her now?’ Harry asked. ‘Is she all right?’

‘I have a nice surprise for you, young man,’ said Granny Wesley. She often called him ‘young man’ and that made Harry feel very old. ‘You and me, we’re going out,’ she said.

‘Why?’ said Harry. She’d never taken him out anywhere before.

‘Why? Because there’s something I want you to see.’

‘What?’

‘How would you like to go to the circus, young man? I saw the notice on the way back from the shops today. There’s elephants, sea lions, clowns. I haven’t been to the circus – oooh – since I don’t know when, since before the war certainly. Half past six it starts. We can be there in a quarter of an hour if we hurry.’

Harry didn’t argue. He had his coat and scarf on in a flash. Bill saw them out. ‘Don’t worry about your mother, Harry,’ he said. ‘She’ll be all right.’

Harry loved everything about buses, the race up the winding stairs to get to the top before the bus lurched forward, the ping of the bell as the conductor called out, ‘Hold very tight please’. He liked the seat at the front, so that he could hang on to the white rail in front of him and steer the bus round the corners. It was only a few stops, but to Harry’s great delight it took an age in the smog. Granny Wesley let him give the money to the bus conductor. Harry watched eagerly as he picked out the tickets, punched them and handed them over. ‘You can keep them,’ said Granny Wesley. She was being unusually kind to him, and for a moment Harry wondered why; but then they were on the pavement and caught up in a flood of people and carried along with them towards the light of a great tent with coloured lights flickering all around and music blaring from loudspeakers. Granny Wesley guided him from behind into a ringside seat and gave him a toffee apple. He tried to bite through the outside of it and failed. He couldn’t open his teeth wide enough.

He was still licking at the toffee when the lights went down, the audience hushed and the drums rolled to a crashing crescendo. A spotlight picked out a white horse, neck arched, walking out into the ring, and then behind came another, and then another, and another and another, until the ring was circled with identical horses. Harry was so close to them that he could smell them as they passed by. The sawdust from their feet flew up and landed on his coat. It was too close for comfort for Granny Wesley who held her handkerchief up to her mouth. She was to keep it there all through the performance. Then came the ringmaster, striding out into the ring, resplendent in red-spangled evening jacket and top hat, a whip in his hand. The horses came to a snorting halt and turned inwards towards him, a tail swishing right in front of Harry’s face. The loudspeaker whistled and crackled. ‘Signor Blondini is proud to present to you this evening his world famous travelling circus.’ Trumpets blared raucously and the show began.

Harry could see the ringmaster’s face. He expected him to be Signor Blondini but he wasn’t, he was sure of that. He was too tall, too young. As each act came and went he looked for Signor Blondini and Ocky, but very soon he became so absorbed in everything he saw, in the colour and the noise of it, that he forgot all about them. There were acrobats on horseback, somersaulting as they rode, jumping from horse to horse. There were sea lions tossing their footballs from tail to nose and twirling them in the air. There were elephants trooping around the ring, trunks entwined with tails, and dogs that danced on their hind legs. There were jugglers, trick cyclists, fire eaters and, in between every act, the clowns. No one on the front row escaped the soapy water. No one really wanted to – except Granny Wesley. Whenever the clowns came by with their buckets she shrank back in her seat. Harry thought she was trying to pretend she wasn’t there.

When Ocky did appear at last, Harry was taken completely by surprise. She was leading a white-faced clown into the centre of the ring. Harry nearly called out, he was so excited. The clown took a violin from under his arm and sat down on a white chair. The lights dimmed and he began to play a plaintive ringing tune that silenced at once all the buzz and the laughter in the audience. Ocky sat at his feet and picked at the sand, eating whatever it was that she found there while the clown played on. He was a sad, pathetic figure out there in the centre of the ring, somehow not in keeping with the brash, bombastic spectacle of the circus. Not for him the baggy trousers, the red braces, the outsize shoes and the grotesquely painted faces of the other clowns. He was dressed down to his red knee-length socks in a black costume covered in large yellow and red butterflies. When he played ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ the audience joined in humming softly – some singing the words, but never too loud. And then suddenly the lights were up again and the clown-gang was back. They gathered round to mimic the butterfly clown as he played, but he took no notice. They danced idiotically, waltzing together and polka-ing together, tripping over each other; but the butterfly clown ignored them and played on. They picked up their buckets and were about to empty them on the butterfly clown, turning to the audience to ask if they should. ‘No! No!’ came the shout, and still the violin played on, a new tune now, a different tempo, faster and more rhythmic. Quite suddenly Ocky was on her feet clapping her hands. All the clowns froze where they were for just a moment, and then the butterfly clown began to sway in time to the music as he played. The clowns followed suit, no longer mocking him. They were becoming lost in the music, hypnotised by it. After a minute or two the butterfly clown stopped playing and laid the violin down on the chair behind him. He looked around the laughing audience, pointed to the still swaying clowns and put his finger to his lips to quieten the audience. Then he took several green balls out of his pockets and began to juggle with them expertly. The clowns did the same. They too dipped into their pockets and took out several green balls and they too began to juggle, throwing the balls higher and higher and then lower and lower, and in perfect time with the butterfly clown. When the butterfly clown finished, he put them back in his pocket, but he left one in his mouth. The clowns, mesmerised, did the same. It was the first and only act that Granny Wesley seemed to enjoy, and she laughed freely, a laugh Harry never knew she had in her. Whatever the butterfly clown did, the other clowns had to do, too. They could not help themselves. If he scratched his nose, they did. If he yawned, they did. If he stood on his head, they did. The audience howled for more, longing for the clown-gang to get more of their come-uppance. The butterfly clown bent down and whispered to Ocky, who ran off and fetched a bucket, a red one marked ‘OOZE’ in big letters. She dragged it back and left it at the butterfly clown’s feet. The butterfly clown bent down and whispered something to Ocky who clapped herself enthusiastically and then resumed her sitting position. All this time the clowns were duly following the butterfly clown’s every move, bending down and whispering to chimpanzees that weren’t there, and fetching their red buckets marked ‘OOZE’. And when the butterfly clown picked up the bucket Ocky had brought him, of course the clowns picked up their buckets, too. The butterfly clown, a wide grin on his face now, showed the audience that his bucket was empty. He turned round and round so that everyone could see. Everyone knew what he had in mind now and willed him on to do it. ‘Yes! Yes!’ they roared. ‘Yes! Yes!’ He didn’t need much persuasion, but he pretended he did until the audience had insisted loudly enough and long enough. Satisfied now that this was really what they wanted, he lifted the bucket up above his head and turned it upside down, and so did all the clowns around him, covering themselves in a white ooze that dribbled over their heads and down their shoulders. As the clowns wiped their faces the audience roared their approval. They stamped and they clapped, Harry as loudly as anyone. Ocky clapped her hands with everyone else, and then led the butterfly clown in a lap of triumph around the circus ring.

As she passed by, Harry called and called to her but to his great disappointment Ocky never even turned to look. Harry gazed up at the face of the butterfly clown and tried to catch his eye, but he seemed to be looking into the far distance almost as if he was in a trance. Harry waved at him but he never waved back. The man sitting next to Harry was shouting as he clapped, ‘That’s him. That’s Mr Nobody, I know it is.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Granny Wesley over Harry’s head. The man was shouting louder, clapping all the while and pointing.

‘Him, that clown, that’s Mr Nobody. I seen him do the very same thing before the war. Famous he is, Mr Nobody.’

‘How do you know it’s him?’ Harry asked.

‘Well you always know with the clowns, son. They all of them wear different costumes, different make-up. Like a sort of trademark. No two clowns are ever the same. It’s him, I know it is. No one else like him.’

The lap of triumph had become the grand parade, the finale. The horses came by, and the elephants, the acrobats and the dogs; and the clowns still scooping the white ooze off their faces and throwing it into the audience or at each other. In front of them all came Ocky leading Mr Nobody by the hand. They were coming past him again. ‘It’s him. I’m sure it is. That’s Mr Nobody,’ cried the man beside Harry, craning forward. ‘It is you, isn’t it, Mr Nobody?’ The butterfly clown heard, smiled and nodded, but he hardly turned his head. Then he seemed to stumble in the sawdust and clutched at the ringside to steady himself, his hand gripping the rail right in front of Harry’s seat. His hair grew only sparsely on the top of his head, but was long and bushy and red around his ears. Except for that his entire head down to his neck was chalk white. His startlingly red lips, the same colour as his hair, were painted where there were no lips, but the two black moles above and below his mouth looked real enough. As Harry looked at him their eyes met momentarily and Harry could see why he had stumbled. Mr Nobody’s eyes were full of dreams. He was like a man walking in his sleep. And then he was gone, the parade was all over, the magic was broken and they were all leaving.

At the bus stop outside there was a long queue and Peter Barker was there. ‘Smashing, wasn’t it?’ he said and Harry nodded. ‘Don’t you like your toffee apple?’ he said. Until then Harry hadn’t even realised he still had it. His hand was sticky with toffee down to his wrist. He began to lick his fingers.

‘Still hurting, is it?’ said Peter Barker.

‘What?’ said Harry, knowing quite well what he meant, but not wanting Granny Wesley to find out anything about it.

‘Your hand,’ said Peter Barker deliberately loudly.

‘What happened to your hand?’ asked Granny Wesley.

‘I fell over,’ Harry said, ‘in the playground. But it’s all right now.’ He looked darkly at Peter who was about to argue but stopped just in time to avoid getting his shin kicked.

There was a long cold wait until the right bus came. Granny Wesley stamped her feet and grumbled about the buses, and when theirs came at last she complained to the conductor that it wasn’t right to keep people waiting on a night like this and that she was in a hurry to get home. The conductor winked at Harry and said he was sorry but there wasn’t a lot he could do about the smog, and that seemed to silence Granny Wesley for a bit. She kept looking at her watch, shaking he head and tutting all the way home.

Bill met them at the door smiling broadly. ‘I’ve got a son,’ he said, and he hugged Granny Wesley, who began to cry.

‘Can I see Mum, then?’ Harry said.

‘And you’ve got a little brother, Harry,’ said Bill. ‘What do you think of that?’ Harry wanted neither a brother nor a sister, but if he had to make a choice he’d have preferred a sister.

‘Can I see her?’

‘’Course you can,’ said Bill. ‘Just for a minute or two. The doctor says we mustn’t tire her. She’s had a rough time of it you know, Harry. She had us all worried sick, your mother did.’

Harry’s mother was propped up on her pillows, her fair hair all around her, like a halo, Harry thought. She smiled weakly at Harry as he came closer. There was a wicker cradle beside the bed. Harry’s mother held out her arms to him, and kissed him.

‘Did you have a good time dear?’ she said. ‘Billy said Granny took you to the circus.’ Harry peered down at the baby in the cradle. All he could see was a bright pink, wrinkled face and one tiny clenched fist. There was some dark hair which looked a bit wet. The rest of him was hidden under the blankets. Granny Wesley was beside him now, bending over the cradle, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘Isn’t he the perfect poppet,’ she said. ‘He looks just like Bill did when he was born, just the same.’

‘What do you think of him, Harry?’ asked his mother. ‘Isn’t he the most beautiful boy you ever saw? Isn’t he?’ Harry didn’t know what to say because he certainly wasn’t beautiful, but he didn’t want to have to tell his mother that. So he said nothing.

‘We’re calling him George,’ said Bill, ‘after my father. Suits him, don’t you think?’

‘Oh that’s wonderful,’ said Granny Wesley. ‘Wonderful.’ And she cried some more.

Harry went over to the bed to sit by his mother. ‘Are you better now, Mum?’ he asked.

‘I’ll be fine dear,’ she said, and then her face filled suddenly with anxiety. ‘Oh, be careful with him!’ she cried. Granny Wesley had picked up the baby and was cradling him in her arms.

‘Oh, don’t you worry, my dear,’ she chortled, her crooked finger stroking the baby’s chin. ‘I’ve done this before, remember? I know what I’m doing. You can see the Wesley in him. Big forehead. Sign of intelligence.’

‘Please put him down, Granny,’ Harry’s mother begged, her eyes full of tears. ‘Please.’ Bill and Granny Wesley looked at each other.

‘You’re tired, dear,’ said Bill taking the baby from Granny Wesley and laying it back in the cradle. ‘You’d better go now, Harry. Kiss your mother goodnight and then off to bed with you. It’s late enough already and you’ve got school again tomorrow.’ Harry wanted to stay with his mother and he knew she would have liked that too but she would not say so. She never seemed to stand up for him these days. ‘You’d better go, dear,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Harry lay there on his bed. No one came to say goodnight to him but someone switched off the light in the passage plunging him into the darkness. They knew he liked the light left on, they knew it. He was relieved though that his worst wishes had not come true. He hadn’t wanted the baby actually to die, just not to come, that’s all; but since the baby hadn’t died, since it had come, he wouldn’t have to mention his wicked thoughts to Father Murphy at Confession. He said his prayers lying down. He knew he shouldn’t, but it was too cold to get out of bed. He prayed for all the usual people and he included little George too because he thought he ought to. He prayed especially that night for Signor Blondini and Ocky and for Mr Nobody, the butterfly clown, but not at all for Miss Hardcastle, definitely not for Miss Hardcastle.

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