The Classic Morpurgo Collection. Michael Morpurgo

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      “Take care, dear,” she said. “And be sure you come again soon, won’t you? I’ll be expecting you.”

      “I will,” I replied. I climbed the fence before I turned to wave; but by that time the car had gone.

      To my huge relief no one had missed me. And best of all, Basher Beaumont was in the sickroom. He’d gone down with measles. I just hoped his measles would last a long time, a very long time.

      All through supper I could think of nothing but Bertie Andrews and his white lion. Stew and dumplings and then semolina pudding with raspberry jam – again! It was as I was picking my way through my slimy semolina that I remembered Bertie Andrews had been at this school. Maybe, I thought, maybe he’d had to sit here and eat slimy semolina just as we did now.

      I looked up at the honours boards around the dining hall, at the names of all the boys who had won scholarships over the years. I looked for Bertie Andrews. He wasn’t there. But then, I thought, why should he be? Maybe, like me, he wasn’t brilliant at his school work. Not everyone wins scholarships.

      Cookie – Mr Cook, my history teacher – was sitting beside me at the end of my table. “Who were you looking for, Morpurgo?” he asked suddenly.

      “Andrews, sir,” I said. “Bertie Andrews.”

      “Andrews? Andrews? There’s an Albert Andrews who won the Victoria Cross in the First World War. You mean him?” Cookie scraped his bowl clean and licked the back of his spoon. “I love raspberry jam. You’ll find his name in the chapel, under the East Window, under the War memorial. But he wasn’t killed in the war, you know. He lived down at Strawbridge, that place with the lion on the gateway, just across the main road. He died, maybe ten, twelve years ago, soon after I came to teach here. The only old boy ever to win the VC. That’s why they put up a memorial plaque to him in the chapel after he died. I remember the day his wife came to unveil it – his widow, I should say. Poor dear, just herself and her dog in that great big place. She died only a few months later. Broken heart, they say. You can, you know. You can die of a broken heart. That house has been empty ever since. No family to take it on. No one wants it. Too big, you see. Shame.”

      I said I wanted to be excused, to go to the toilet. I hurtled down the passage, out across the courtyard and into the chapel. The small brass plaque was exactly where Cookie had said it was, but hidden by a vase of flowers. I moved the vase to one side. The plaque read:

      ALBERT ANDREWS VC

      BORN 1897. DIED 1968.

      AN OLD BOY OF THIS SCHOOL.

      AND THE LION SHALL LIE DOWN

      WITH THE LAMB.

      All night long I tried to puzzle it out. Cookie was wrong. He just had to be. I never slept a wink.

       Adonis Blues

      The next afternoon after games were over, I went over the fence at the bottom of the park, hared up through Innocents Breach, across the road, along the wall and slipped through the iron gateway with the stone lion roaring above me. It was raining a light summer rain.

      I tried knocking at the front door. No one came. No dog barked. I went round to the back and peered in through the kitchen window. The box kite was still there on the kitchen table, but there was no sign of the old lady anywhere. I rattled the kitchen door, and knocked louder, again and again. I called out: “Hello! Hello!” There was no reply. I banged on the window. “Are you there? Are you there?”

      “We all are,” came a voice from behind me. I turned. There was no one there. I was alone, alone with the white lion on the hillside. I had imagined it.

      I climbed the hill and went to sit in the grass above the white of the lion’s mane. I looked down at the great house beneath me. Jackdaws cawed overhead. There was bracken and grass growing out of the gutters and around the chimney pots. Some of the windows were boarded up. Drainpipes hung loose and rusting. The place was empty, quite empty.

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