The Classic Morpurgo Collection. Michael Morpurgo

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       Running Free

      It was the best year of Bertie’s young life. But when it ended, it ended more painfully than he could ever have imagined. He’d always known that one day when he was older he would have to go away to school, but he had thought and hoped it would not be for a long time yet. He’d simply put it out of his mind.

      His father had just returned home from Johannesburg after his yearly business trip. He broke the news at supper that first evening. Bertie knew there was something in the wind. His mother had been sad again in recent days, not sick, just strangely sad. She wouldn’t look him in the eye and she winced whenever she tried to smile at him. The lion had just lain down beside him, his head warm on Bertie’s feet, when his father cleared his throat and began. It was going to be a lecture. Bertie had had them before often enough, about manners, about being truthful, about the dangers of leaving the compound.

      “You’ll soon be eight, Bertie,” he said. “And your mother and I have been doing some thinking. A boy needs a proper education, a good school. Well, we’ve found just the right place for you, a school near Salisbury in England. Your Uncle George and Aunt Melanie live nearby and have promised to look after you in the holidays, and to visit you from time to time. They’ll be father and mother to you for a while. You’ll get on with them well enough, I’m sure you will. They are fine, good people. So you’ll be off on the ship to England in July. Your mother will accompany you. She will spend the summer with you in Salisbury and after she has taken you to your school in September, she’ll then return here to the farm. It’s all arranged.”

      As his heart filled with a terrible dread, all Bertie could think of was his white lion. “But the lion,” he cried, “what about the lion?”

      “I’m afraid there’s something else I have to tell you,” his father said. Looking across at Bertie’s mother, he took a deep breath. And then he told him. He told him he had met a man whilst he was in Johannesburg, a Frenchman, a circus owner from France. He was over in Africa looking for lions and elephants to buy for his circus. He liked them young, very young, a year or less, so that he could train them up without too much trouble. Besides, they were easier and cheaper to transport when they were young. He would be coming out to the farm in a few days’ time to see the white lion for himself. If he liked what he saw, he would pay good money and take him away

      It was the only time in his life Bertie had ever shouted at his father. “No! No, you can’t!”

      It was rage that wrung the hot tears from him, but they soon gave way to silent tears of sadness and loss. There was no comforting him, but his mother tried all the same.

      “We can’t keep him here for ever, Bertie,” she said. “We always knew that, didn’t we? And you’ve seen how he stands by the fence gazing out into the veld. You’ve seen him pacing up and down. But we can’t just let him out. He’d be all on his own, no mother to protect him. He couldn’t cope. He’d be dead in weeks. You know he would.”

      “But you can’t send him to a circus! You can’t!” said Bertie. “He’ll be shut up behind bars. I promised him he never would be. And they’ll point at him. They’ll laugh at him. He’d rather die. Any animal would.” But he knew as he looked across the table at them that it was hopeless, that their minds were quite made up.

      For Bertie the betrayal was total. That night he made up his mind what had to be done. He waited until he heard his father’s deep breathing next door. Then, with his white lion at his heels, he crept downstairs in his pyjamas, took down his father’s rifle from the rack and stepped out into the night. The compound gate yawned open noisily when he pushed it, but then they were out, out and running free. Bertie had no thought of the dangers around him, only that he must get as far from home as he could before he did it.

      The lion padded along beside him, stopping every now and again to sniff the air. A clump of trees became a herd of elephants wandering towards them out of the dawn. Bertie ran for it. He knew how elephants hated lions. He ran and ran till his legs could run no more. As the sun came up over the veld he climbed to the top of a kopje and sat down, his arm round the lion’s neck. The time had come.

      “Be wild now,” he whispered. “You’ve got to be wild. Don’t come home. Don’t ever come home. They’ll put you behind bars. You hear what I’m saying? All my life I’ll think of you, I promise I will. I won’t ever forget you.” And he buried his head in the lion’s neck and heard the greeting groan from deep inside him. He stood up. “I’m going now,” he said. “Don’t follow me. Please don’t follow me.” And Bertie clambered down off the kopje and walked away.

      When he looked back, the lion was still sitting there watching him; but then he stood up, yawned, stretched, licked his lips and sprang down after him. Bertie shouted at him, but he kept coming. He threw sticks. He threw stones. Nothing worked. The lion would stop, but then as soon as Bertie walked on, he simply followed at a safe distance.

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