The Sleeping Sword. Michael Morpurgo

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СКАЧАТЬ Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Arthur, High King of Britain. With their help I managed to banish the hateful silence of my room and to fill my life with sound. This seemed to help, to distract me, to take myself out of myself – at least, for a while. But as time went on I found I also had something else to worry about. I had tried to ignore it, to pretend it wasn’t so. But I couldn’t, not any longer.

      At first I hoped it might be temporary, just a phase that would pass. But it didn’t pass. If anything it became worse. It was something I had to hide, something I’d told no one about, not even Anna. Ever since the accident I had been unable to remember things, little things that might not have mattered so much on their own. But there were also, I discovered, important parts of my life that had just gone missing. For instance, apparently we’d all been on holiday to Canada when I was five, to see my uncle Bill, my father’s brother, who lived in Toronto. People still talked about it. I remember I’d seen the photographs. It was the only time I’d been up in a jumbo jet. But I couldn’t remember any of it.

      Nor could I recall anything of a trip up to London only a year or so ago, when we’d been to the zoo, and to the Science Museum, to the Tower of London, and to Stamford Bridge to see my favourite team Chelsea playing Tottenham Hotspur. All these events were a complete mystery to me. In fact, I had no memories of even being a Chelsea fan.

      My mind, I was discovering, was full of blank spaces, gaps in my memory that were completely unpredictable, so that I was never prepared for them.

      The vicar came to see me one day – ‘just to cheer you up,’ as he put it – and started going on about a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat he’d put on the year before in the church, apparently.

      ‘You’ve a fine singing voice, Bun,’ he said. ‘Everyone said so. You were a wonderful Pharaoh, just wonderful.’

      I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. I had no memory of it whatsoever. I covered up as best I could, but how well I had covered up I could never really be sure, because of course I couldn’t see people’s faces to see how they reacted.

      As each new memory gap became evident I became more and more terrified, because it made me fear I might now be losing my mind as well as my sight. It was my darkest, deepest secret and I kept it to myself.

      There was even worse to come. It was becoming obvious that I couldn’t go back to school with the others on Tresco, that sooner or later I’d have to go to a ‘special’ school for the blind. There was no school for the blind on Scilly. I’d have to go to the mainland. I’d have to leave home.

      When the time came my mother tried to break it to me as gently as she could. ‘All the kids have to go to school on the mainland at sixteen anyway, for their sixth form. You know that, Bundle. You’d just be doing the same thing, only a few years earlier, that’s all. And it’s just the right place for you. Dad and I have been to see it. They’ve got all the right equipment, all the specialist teachers you need. Lovely grounds, too. It’s only up at Exeter. Not far. We can come and see you, and you can come back home often. I promise.’

      It was the final confirmation that I was indeed different from everyone around me and that, therefore, I was to be treated differently.

      ‘It won’t be until the end of the summer, Bun,’ said my father, laying a hand on my arm. ‘And it won’t be so bad, honest it won’t. You’ll see. I went away to school at your age, and I loved it. Lots to do, lots of new friends.’

      I was to be separated from home, from everyone I knew and loved, my mother, my father, from Liam and Dan, and from Anna, too. It was more than I could bear. I lay there all night thinking it through. By the time I heard the dawn chorus of gulls and oystercatchers, I had made up my mind.

      There was only one way out, and I would have to take it.

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