The Classic Morpurgo Collection. Michael Morpurgo
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Название: The Classic Morpurgo Collection
Автор: Michael Morpurgo
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Книги для детей: прочее
isbn: 9780007536696
isbn:
I remember it was just after my tenth birthday. It was Sunday and I was out flying my kites. But there wasn’t much wind, and no matter how hard I ran, I just couldn’t get even my best box kite to catch the wind and fly. I climbed all the way up Wood Hill, looking for wind. And there at the top I found it at last, enough to send my kite soaring. But then the wind gusted and my kite swirled away crazily towards the trees. I couldn’t haul it in in time. It caught on a branch and stuck fast in a high elm tree in amongst the rookery. The rooks flew out cawing in protest whilst I tugged at my line, crying in my fury and frustration. I gave up, sat down and howled. That was when I noticed a boy emerging from the shadow of the trees.
“I’ll get it down for you,” he said, and began to climb the tree. Easy as you like, he crawled along the branch, reached out and released my kite.
It floated down and landed at my feet. My best kite was torn and battered, but at least I had it back. Then he was down the tree and standing there in front of me.
“Who are you? What do you want?” I asked.
“I can mend it, if you like,” he said.
“Who are you?” I asked again.
“Bertie Andrews,” he replied. He was wearing a grey school uniform, and one I recognised at once. From the lion gateway I had often watched them on their walks, two by two, blue school caps, blue socks.
“You’re from the school up the road, aren’t you?” I said.
“You won’t tell on me, will you?” His eyes were wide with sudden alarm. I saw then that his legs were scratched and bleeding.
“Been in the wars, have you?” I said.
“I’ve run away,” he went on. “And I’m not going back, not ever.”
“Where are you going?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. In the holidays I live at my Auntie’s in Salisbury, but I don’t like it there.”
“Haven’t you got a proper home?” I said.
“’Course I have,” he replied. “Everyone has. But it’s in Africa.”
That whole afternoon we sat together on Wood Hill and he told me all about Africa, about his farm, about his waterhole, about his white lion and how he was somewhere in France now, in a circus and how he couldn’t bear to think about him. “But I’ll find him,” he said fiercely. “I’ll find him somehow.”
To be honest, I wasn’t sure how much I really believed all this about a white lion. I just didn’t think lions could be white.
“But the trouble is,” he went on, “even when I do find him, I won’t be able to take him home to Africa like I always wanted to.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because my mother died.” He looked down and pulled at the grass beside him. “She had malaria, but I think she really died of a broken heart.” When he looked up his eyes were swimming with tears. “You can, you know. Then my father sold the farm and married someone else. I never want to go back. I never want to see him again, never.”
I wanted to say how sorry I was about his mother, but I couldn’t find the right words to say it.
“You really live here, do you?” he said. “In that big place? It’s as big as my school.”
I told him then what little there was to know of me, all about Father being away in London so much, about Nolips and Nanny Mason. He sucked at the purple clover as I talked; and when neither of us had anything more to say we lay back in the sun and watched a pair of mewing buzzards wheeling overhead. I was wondering what would happen to him if he got caught.
“What are you going to do?” I said at last. “Won’t you get into trouble?”
“Only if they catch me.”
“But they will, they’re bound to, in the end,” I said. “You’ve got to go back, before they miss you.”
After a while he propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at me.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe they won’t have missed me yet. Maybe it’s not too late. But if I go back, could I come again? I can face it if I can come again. Would you let me? I’ll mend your kite, really I will.” And he gave me a smile so melting that I couldn’t refuse him.
So it was arranged. He would meet me under the big wych elm on Wood Hill every Sunday afternoon at three, or as close to three as he could. He would have to come through the woods so that he could never be seen from the house. I knew full well that if Nolips ever found out, there’d be merry hell to pay – for both of us, probably. Bertie shrugged, and said that if he got caught, all they could do at school was beat him, and that once more wouldn’t make much difference anyway. And if they expelled him, well then, that would suit him fine.
Bertie came every Sunday after that. Sometimes it couldn’t be for long because he had detention back at school, or maybe I’d have to send him away because Father was down for the weekend, shooting pheasants in the park with his friends. We had to be careful. He did mend my best box kite, but after a while we forgot all about flying kites, and we just talked and walked.
Bertie and I lived for our Sundays. In those next two years we became, first, good companions, and then best of friends. We never told each other we were, because we didn’t need to. The more I got to know him, the more I believed everything about Africa, and about “The White Prince” in the circus somewhere in France. I believed him too when he told me again and again how somehow, someday he would find his white lion, and make sure that he’d never have to live behind bars again.
The school holidays always dragged interminably because Bertie wasn’t there on Sundays. But at least there were no lessons to endure with Nolips. She always went off in the holidays to stay with her sister by the sea in Margate. Instead of her lessons though, Nanny Mason would take me on endless nature walks – “walks on the wild side”, she called them.
I grumbled and stamped my feet. “But it’s so boring,” СКАЧАТЬ