Alone on a Wide Wide Sea. Michael Morpurgo

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       “Did We Have the Children Here for This?”

      In the end we went to the only person we thought might help. We went to the farmhouse to see Ida. We told her everything: how Wes was beaten each morning, how he was on hunger strike, how he could die if something wasn’t done soon. Even while she was listening to us, she was looking around nervously. I could tell she just wanted us gone. And I could tell too that she already knew everything we’d been telling her. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said when we’d finished. “Go now, go quickly, before someone sees you. I’ll see what I can do.” And she closed the door and went back inside, leaving us standing there. I told Marty that I was sure she’d find a way to help Wes somehow.

      “She’d better,” he said, “or else he’ll be a gonner, that’s for sure.”

      That same night after lock-up, Ida came to the dormitory. It was the first time she’d ever come inside at night. We heard the door unlock, saw the dancing light of her torch. All of us expected it to be Piggy Bacon on one of his occasional late-night patrols so we lay doggo, feigning sleep. “I’ve come to see Wes,” she whispered. “Which bed?”

      When we heard who it was we all sat up. I took her there and showed her. She sat down on his bed and tried to talk to him. Wes didn’t respond at all, not at first. He wouldn’t even turn over and look at her. Everyone was there by now, gathered round his bed.

      Ida put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve brought you some cakes, Wes, and some milk,” she said. “Please, you must eat.” And she opened up the cake tin on her lap. “I’ve put a cherry on each one for you. You’ll like them.” Wes turned over then and looked up at her.

      “I can’t,” he said. “If I eat, he’ll make me work. And I won’t work for him. Never again. Not ever.”

      She tried. For an hour or more she did all she could to tempt him, to persuade him. She told him that God helped those who helped themselves, how she understood his suffering. “And I know that God does too,” she said, “because he has told me so. I prayed. I asked him what to do, and he said I must come to you and feed you. God loves us all, Wes. In our suffering, we must always remember that.”

      But no amount of gentle persuasion would change his mind. Even her tears didn’t seem to move him. We could hear the tears in her voice as she pleaded with him, smoothing his hair all the while. Nothing she said or did made any difference. In the end she simply had to give up, just as we had before her.

      We had often heard the sound of fury from the farmhouse late at night, but until now it had always been a one-sided battle, with only Piggy Bacon’s voice raging and roaring, then afterwards the sound of Ida sobbing and the dog whining. This time there were two voices raised, hers as loud and as angry as his. For the first time, Ida was giving as good as she got. We could hear her every word. “The boy will die!” she cried. “Do you want that? Did we have these children here for this?” I wasn’t the only one who felt like cheering her on.

      “All children are sinful, born sinful,” Piggy railed back, “and these are more sinful than most. My task is to cleanse them of sin, to prepare them for heaven. I won’t spare the rod, because it is the only way they will learn. And the boy has to learn who is master here.”

      “I thought Jesus was master here,” she argued. “Or did you forget that? You punish the boy only out of pride, and you know it.” And so it went on. Sadly though, it ended as it so often ended, with the sound of smashing crockery, of blows, and Ida’s sharp cries of pain and the dog yelping and whining. We knew Piggy was kicking him. Then silence, and sobbing.

      Marty began the chorus, and raised to sudden courage we all joined in: “For she’s a jolly good fellow, for she’s a jolly good fellow, for she’s a jolly good fellow, and so say all of us.” We sang it out loud, again and again, at the top of our voices to be sure that Piggy could hear us. He heard all right. He came out of the farmhouse and bellowed at us to stop or he’d come over and whip the lot of us. So, cowed once more, we stopped. I felt even then that our silence was a betrayal. The shame of betrayal is something that never leaves you.

      All of us knew that Ida had done battle for Wes and for all of us that night. None of us knew that although she may have lost the battle, she had not yet given up the fight. Wes didn’t know it either, of course, which is why, I suspect, he decided to do what he did.

      He disappeared the next morning, but he didn’t go alone. We came back from work for our soup and bread at lunchtime as usual, and found his bed was empty. I immediately supposed that maybe Ida had come over and taken him back to the farmhouse to nurse him and look after him. So I ran over and found her at the back, digging in her vegetable garden. She hadn’t seen him, she said. She left her digging and joined in the search. Everyone was looking for him now, including Piggy Bacon, who was stomping about the farm, shouting at us to look here and look there, and ranting on about how, if Wes had run off, he was going to find him and thrash the living daylights out of him. Then he discovered, or someone did, that Big Black Jack was missing too. СКАЧАТЬ