In the Mouth of the Wolf. Michael Morpurgo

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      You simply smiled at me as you were rowing, and said, ‘We must each do what we must do, Francis.’ Then you looked down at my bare feet in the bottom of the boat, and laughed. ‘Strewth, I had forgotten what big feet you have! That’s what they called you at school, you know, when you weren’t listening. “Big Feet”.’ You wriggled your own feet then, and said, ‘See those? Small feet, Francis. I always wanted them to be bigger, like yours. I think maybe we all have to get used to our own feet.’ This was my new brother, no longer little, a brother with a mind of his own, a wonderful man.

      So you went your way, and I went mine. Neither you nor I wrote letters if we could help it. We met occasionally, awkwardly, at family gatherings which I never enjoyed. The family gloried in your success and would send me reviews from time to time. ‘Pieter Cammaerts is remarkable, a tour de force.’ ‘Pieter Cammaerts, a star in the making.’

      And whilst you were gathering these accolades during that last spring and summer of peace, I was still trying to discover where my big feet might take me. You had always been so sure of yourself. You set out to be a great actor and that’s what you became. As for me, I found myself one day standing there in front of a class of forty children, trying to be a teacher. Teach and teach well, I thought, give the children the opportunities they deserve. That was the only way to make the world a better, more peaceful place.

      You know me, Pieter, ever full of high-minded notions and pontifications. But these notions weren’t of much use to me in front of all those children, most of whom were not at all keen to learn. Being big and tall helped, I found. I frightened them at first. ‘Mr Giant’ they called me. ‘Big Feet’ too. I would sometimes hear a whispered chorus of ‘Fee fi fo fum’, when they saw me coming.

      I learnt plenty from one or two other teachers at the school, Harry in particular. He taught me that you had to be on their side, and they had to know it, that mutual respect and affection was the key. I was discovering for myself that I had in the class forty expectant faces gazing up at me, forty intellects waiting to be stimulated, forty hearts waiting to be moved to laughter or tears, through stories and poems and plays. I had to get to know what made each of them tick, and to do that I had to learn to listen to them, and understand them. They had to know they had a friend in me as well as a teacher.

      I tried to pass on to them all the things I had loved as a child, all I had done with you and Papa in the Ardennes. I walked the river banks with them, looking for otters and herons and kingfishers, walked the wild woods when the bluebells were out, discovered foxholes with them, watched larks rising over the fields. It was quite unexpected, but I fell in love with teaching, and knew quickly I would make it my life.