Singing for Mrs Pettigrew: A Story Maker's Journey
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I spoke to a postman emptying the postbox and enquired about some of the people I’d known. He was a good age, in his fifties, I thought, but he knew no one I asked him about. Mad Jack wasn’t on his wall. Mrs Parsons’ shop was still there but now sold antiques and bric-a-brac. I went to the churchyard and found the graves of the colonel and his wife with the black pencilled eyebrows, but I’d remembered her name wrong. She was Veronica, not Valerie. They had died within six months of each other. I got chatting to the man who had just finished mowing the grass in the graveyard and asked him about the atomic power station and whether people minded living alongside it.
“Course I mind,” he replied. He took off his flat cap and wiped his brow with his forearm. “Whoever put that ruddy thing up should be ashamed of themselves. Never worked properly all the time it was going anyway.”
“It’s not going any more then?” I asked.
“Been shut down, I don’t know, maybe eight or nine years,” he said, waxing even more vehement. “Out of date. Clapped out. Useless. And do you know what they had to do? They had to wrap the whole place under a blanket of concrete, and it’s got to stay there like that for a couple of hundred years at least so’s it doesn’t leak out and kill the lot of us. Madness, that’s what it was, if you ask me. And when you think what it must have been like before they put it up. Miles and miles of wild marshland as far as the eye could see. All gone. Must’ve been wonderful. Some funny old lady lived out there in a railway carriage. Chinese lady, they say. And she had a donkey. True. I’ve seen photos of her and some kid sitting on a donkey outside her railway carriage. Last person to live out there, she was. Then they went and kicked her out and built that ugly great wart of a place. And for what? For a few years of electricity that’s all been used up and gone. Price of progress, I suppose they’d call it. I call it a crying shame.”
I bought a card in the post office and wrote a letter to Mother. I knew she’d love to hear I’d been back to Bradwell. Then I made my way past the Cricketers’ Inn and the school, where I stopped to watch the children playing where I’d played; then on towards St Peter’s, the old chapel by the sea wall, the favourite haunt of my youth, where Mrs Pettigrew had taken me all those years before, remote and bleak from the outside, and inside filled with quiet and peace. Some new houses had been built along the road since my time. I hurried past trying not to notice them, longing now to leave the village behind me. I felt my memories had been trampled enough.
One house name on a white-painted gate to a new bungalow caught my eye: New Clear View. I saw the joke, but didn’t feel like smiling. And beyond the bungalow, there it was again, the power station, massive now because I was closer, a monstrous complex of buildings rising from the marsh, malign and immovable. It offended my eye. It hurt my heart. I looked away and walked on.
When I reached the chapel, no one was there. I had the place to myself, which was how I had always liked it. After I had been inside, I came out and sat down with my back against the sun-warmed brick and rested. The sea murmured. I remembered again my childhood thoughts, how the Romans had been here, the Saxons, the Normans, and now me. A lark rose then from the grass below the sea wall, rising, rising, singing, singing. I watched it disappear into the blue, still singing, singing for Mrs Pettigrew.
key dates for michael
1943 Born St Albans, England
1944 Evacuated to Cumberland
1947 Living in Philbeach Gardens, London
1948 Attended St Matthias CE Primary School, Warwick Road
1951 Attended Abbey Preparatory School, Forest Row
1952 Moved to Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex
1957 Attended King’s School, Canterbury
1962 Spent year at Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst
1963 Married Clare Lane (daughter of Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books)
Living in Rogate, West Sussex
Started teaching in preparatory school
Met Sean Rafferty
Began travels to France
1964 First son, Sebastian, born
Began writing short stories
1965 Moved to London
Studied at King’s College London
1967 Moved to Buriton then Froxfield, Hampshire
Second son, Horatio, born
1968 Moved to Cambridge
Daughter, Rosalind, born
1970 Allen Lane, father-in-law, died
Moved to Kent
Taught in junior and primary schools
1971 Children’s Words published by the National Book League
1974 Published collection of short stories
1975 Bought farm and moved to Devon
1976 Started Farms for City Children
First children visited Nethercott
Met Ted and Carol Hughes
1977 Friend or Foe published
1978–84 Holidayed in Zennor, Cornwall
1982 War Horse published
1984 Began holidaying on Bryher, Isles of Scilly
1985 Why the Whales Came published
1986 First grandchild, Léa, born. Followed since then by Eloise, Alice, Lucie, Alan, Laurence and Hazel
1987 Visited Oradour-sur-Glane
1988 Filming of Why the Whales Came
1990–2000 The Butterfly Lion, King of the Cloud Forests, The Wreck of the Zanzibar, Waiting for Anya, The Dancing Bear and other titles published
1993 Mother died
Sean Rafferty died
War in Bosnia
1998 Created Children’s Laureate with Ted Hughes
1999 Kensuke’s Kingdom and “My Father Is a Polar Bear” published
2001 Foot and mouth disease; all farms closed for eight months Out of the Ashes published
2003 Private Peaceful published
Appointed as third Children’s Laureate
2004–05 Travelled extensively in Russia, South Africa, Europe and all over British Isles
The Best Christmas Present in the World published
2005 Spent two weeks in Venice
I Believe in Unicorns and The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips published
2006 Singing for Mrs Pettigrew published
Meeting Cézanne was first broadcast May 2004 on BBC Radio 4; first published 2005 by Hay Festival Press. “The Giant’s Necklace” is taken from The White Horse of Zennor and Other Stories, first published 1982 by Egmont Books. I Believe in Unicorns was first published 2004 as a short story in The Times; a longer version was published 2005 by Walker Books Ltd. “My One and Only Great Escape” is taken from Ten of the Best School Stories with a Difference!, first published 2002 by HarperCollins Publishers. “I Speak of a Valley” from Poems by Sean rafferty, published by etruscan books and used by permission of Christian Coupe. “Last Load” from Collected Poems by Ted Hughes, used by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. “My Father Is a Polar Bear” is taken from From Hereabout Hill, first published 2000 by Egmont Books. The Silver Swan was first published 2000 by Doubleday. “What Does It Feel Like?” is taken from From Hereabout Hill, first published 2000 by Egmont Books. “Half a Man” is taken from War, first published 2005 by Pan Macmillan. “For Carlos, A Letter from Your Father” is taken from Lines in the Sand, first published 2003 by Frances Lincoln Limited.
First published 2006 by Walker Books Ltd, 87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ
This edition published 2014
Anthology © 2006 Michael Morpurgo
Illustrations © 2006 Peter Bailey
The right of Michael Morpurgo and Peter Bailey to be identified as author and illustrator respectively of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
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ISBN 978-1-4063-6253-4 (ePub)
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