Escape from Shangri-La. Michael Morpurgo

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СКАЧАТЬ thinking. You’re thinking I’m maybe a bit crazed in the head, a bit barmy. Well, maybe I am at that. Maybe I shouldn’t have come at all. I’ve got no business being here, I suppose, not really, not after all these years.’ His eyes were welling with tears. ‘It was an agreement, a sort of understanding, between Arthur’s mother and me. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame her – I wasn’t much good to her, I know that now. One day she just said she’d had enough. She was leaving and she was taking young Arthur with her. She wanted a fresh start, she said. There was this other man – these things happen. Anyway it wasn’t nasty, nothing like that. It’d be best all round if I stayed out of it, she said, best for the boy. He’d soon get used to a new father. So I said I’d keep away, for the boy’s sake. And that’s what I’ve done. I kept my promise, and it wasn’t easy sometimes, I can tell you. A father always wants to know how his son’s grown up. So I never went looking; but when I heard his name on the radio, well, like I said, I thought it was a meant thing. And here I am. He sounded grand on the radio, just grand.’ He brushed away the tears with the back of his hand. He had massively broad hands, brown and engrained with dirt. ‘It took me two weeks thinking about it, and then a whole day standing out there in the rain before I could bring myself to knock on the door.’

      He composed himself again before he went on. He was looking directly at my mother. ‘I haven’t come to bother you, nor him. I promise. I just wanted to see him, see you all, and then I’ll be on my way.’

      My mother glanced up at the kitchen clock. ‘Well, I’m afraid he’s not going to be home for quite a while yet. Half an hour at least, maybe longer.’ Then, quite suddenly, she snapped into teacher mode again – positive, confident, organising. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Cessie, you can go and run a bath.’

      ‘What?’ Sometimes I just could not understand her at all. Why on earth should I have a bath all of a sudden, and before supper too?

      ‘Not for you, Cessie, for Mr Stevens.’ She clapped her hands at me. ‘Go on, hop to it. And he’ll need a towel too, from the airing cupboard – the big green one. We can’t have Mr Stevens sitting around in those wet clothes till your father comes home, can we now? He’ll catch his death.’

      ‘Not Mr Stevens, please. Popsicle. I’m Popsicle,’ my grandfather said quietly. ‘I’d like it very much if you’d call me Popsicle. It’s what everyone calls me. It’s what I’m used to.’

      My mother had been interrupted in full flow, but she was only momentarily taken aback. ‘Popsicle it is then,’ she said, and she bustled me out of the kitchen. ‘I’ll look out some of Arthur’s clothes for you,’ I heard her telling him as I went up the stairs. ‘They’ll be a bit on the large side, I shouldn’t wonder. We’ll have those wet things of yours dry in a jiffy.’ She was talking to him as if she’d known him for years, as if he was one of the family.

      I was thinking about that as I ran the bath, but it wasn’t until I was fetching the towel from the airing cupboard that it began to sink in, that I began to understand what all this really meant. Until then I had believed it, but I hadn’t felt it. I had a new grandfather. Out of nowhere I had a new grandfather! A flush of sudden joy surged through me. As I watched him coming slowly up the stairs, hauling himself up by the banisters, all I wanted to do was to throw my arms round his neck and hug him. I waited until he reached the top, and then I did it. He looked a bit bewildered. I’d taken him by surprise but I think he was pleased all the same.

      ‘Do you have a loofah, Cessie?’ he asked me. ‘I don’t have baths very often. Bit difficult where I live. Bit cramped. Never enough water either. But when I do have a bath I always have my loofah.’

      ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

      ‘It’s a sort of backscrubber. Reaches the parts you can’t reach otherwise.’

      ‘I don’t think we’ve got one,’ I laughed. ‘But you can have a duck, if you want. I’ve got a yellow plastic one called Patsy. Had it ever since I was little.’

      ‘What more could a fellow want?’ He smiled at me as I handed him the towel. ‘Tell you what, Cessie, why don’t you give us a tune on that fiddle of yours, eh? Same tune you were playing when I was out in the street. I liked that. I liked that a lot. You could do me a sort of serenade in the bath.’

      So, with my bedroom door open, I serenaded him with Handel’s Largo. I could hear him humming away and splashing next door in the bathroom. I was playing so well, I was so wrapped up in it, that at first I didn’t notice my mother standing at the door of my room. I could tell she’d been listening for some time. When I stopped playing she said, ‘You play so well, Cessie. When you mean it, you play so well.’ She came over and sat down on my bed. ‘I don’t know what it is. I don’t feel right in myself,’ she said. ‘Shock, I suppose. I can’t explain it. It’s like someone’s just walked over my grave.’ I sat down beside her. She seemed to want me to. ‘It is him, you know,’ she went on. ‘I can see your dad in his face, in his gestures. You can’t fake that.’ She was hugging herself. ‘Maybe I’m frightened, Cessie.’

      ‘Of him?’

      ‘No, of course not. Of what might happen when your dad gets back. I don’t understand. I just don’t know what to make of it. I mean he’ll talk occasionally about his mum, and, very occasionally, about his stepfather too. But in all the time I’ve known him I don’t think he’s ever said a single word to me about his real dad. It’s as if he never existed, like he was almost a non-person. Perhaps I should have asked, but I always felt it was . . . well . . . like forbidden territory, almost as if there was something to hide, something he didn’t want to remember. I don’t know, I don’t know; but what I do know is that any minute now your dad’s going to walk in this house, and I’m going to have to tell him his father’s here. It’s going to be a big surprise, but I’m not sure what kind of surprise, that’s all.’

      ‘I’ll tell him, if you like,’ I said. I didn’t make the offer just to help her out. I offered because I wanted to be quite sure I was there when he was told, that this wouldn’t be one of those private, important things they went out into the garden to discuss earnestly. Popsicle may be my father’s father, but when all was said and done, he was my grandfather not theirs.

      My mother put her hand on mine. ‘We’ll do it together, shall we?’

      That was the moment we heard the front door open, and then slam. My father always slammed the door. It was part of his homecoming ritual. He’d toss the car keys next.

      ‘Anyone home?’ We heard the car keys land on the hall table. He was walking into the kitchen. ‘Anyone home?’

      I don’t know who was squeezing whose hand the harder as we walked together along the landing past the bathroom door. We went down the stairs side by side, holding hands, and into the kitchen, holding hands. My father had his back to us. He was by the sink pouring himself a can of beer. He turned round and took a couple of deep swigs. I had never noticed how big his ears were, but I noticed now. I had to smile in spite of myself. My mother was right. You could see Popsicle in him. He was younger of course, and without the long, yellow hair, but they were so alike.

      He smothered a burp and patted his chest. ‘Pardon me,’ he said. ‘Throat’s as dry as a bone.’

      ‘It’s all that talking you do,’ my mother said, clearing her throat nervously.

      ‘What’s up?’ He was looking at us, from one to the other. We looked back. ‘Nothing the matter, is there? You all right, Cessie?’ I looked away.

      My mother began СКАЧАТЬ