Escape From Shangri-La

by Michael Morpurgo

  ‘What things?’

  ‘It’s what my mother told me about him. She said he’d get mad in the head sometimes. “Mad with sadness”, she called it. One moment high as a kite, the next down in the dumps. And he was a bit of a layabout, couldn’t hold down a job, always in trouble, drank too much, that sort of thing. My mother didn’t want to leave him. She had to. That’s what she told me, and I believe her. I didn’t ask him to come here, did I? He just landed on us, and now he comes up with this fantastical tale that he can’t remember where he’s from, nor where he lives. And you believe him, just like that! Well, I’m afraid I don’t. And now maybe you understand why I don’t. I’ve had enough. I’m going to bed.’

  I heard the kitchen door open and my father’s footsteps on the stairs. I was tempted to jump out of bed and confront him there and then, and tell him just what I thought of him. But I didn’t dare. I heard my mother crying down below in the kitchen. Whenever she cried, I cried. I couldn’t help myself. I cried into my pillow, not only in sympathy but in anger too. I hated my father that night for making her cry and I hated him too for saying what he had about Popsicle. I hardly slept at all. I lay there full of doubts and forebodings.

  By morning I had determined to find out how much of what I’d overheard was true. I would talk to Popsicle and find out for myself exactly how much he could remember, and how much he couldn’t. I would try to do it in such a way that I wouldn’t upset him. I would try to be casual.

  The next morning we were both in Popsicle’s room. I was tightening my violin bow. ‘But before you came here, Popsicle,’ I began as nonchalantly as I could, ‘where did you live?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You too.’ And I wished at once I hadn’t asked. ‘So they told you. I asked them not to. Didn’t want you worrying.’ He sighed. ‘How I wish I knew, Cessie, but I don’t. And that’s the honest truth of it. I don’t remember. I remember ringing the bell on your front door. I can remember you coming down the stairs, and I can remember Patsy too in the bath. But that’s all. I remember bits and pieces from long ago: Bradwell, and Cecilia, and little Arthur – all that. We had some good times, Cessie, good times, believe me. And songs. Don’t know why, but I seem to remember songs. “Yellow Submarine”, “Nowhere Man”, lots of them. Clear as a bell, I remember them. And my poems too, I haven’t lost them, thank God. Keep me sane, they do. But as for the rest, Cessie, it’s gone, all gone. It’s like living in a fog. I’m not lying to you, Cessie. Honestly.’

  I thought of asking more, of probing more deeply, but I couldn’t. I knew enough anyway, enough to know that I believed him, believed him absolutely.

  I waited until my father came home that evening, late again. Popsicle had gone up to bed. I’d been waiting all day for just the moment and now the moment was right. I went storming into the sitting-room.

  ‘It’s not fair.’ I was in tears already. ‘It’s not fair. I heard you. Last night, I heard you. Popsicle can’t help it. He fell and hit his head. He had a stroke. That’s not his fault, is it?’ I had the advantage of surprise. They were both gaping at me. ‘He’d never have had a stroke in the first place if you hadn’t . . .’

  ‘Cessie!’ My mother was trying to stop me, but I was steaming with fury. Nothing would stop me now.

  ‘He’s not making it up, Dad. I know he isn’t. But even if he was, I wouldn’t mind. I like having him here and I want him to stay. I want him to stay forever if he wants to. I hate all this . . . feeling in the air. Do you know what I wish? I wish . . . I wish you weren’t my father.’ I ran out and upstairs to my room where I slammed my door as hard as I could.

  They left me for a few minutes, and then my father came up to my room and sat on my bed. I kept my back to him.

  ‘It’s not easy for you to understand what’s going on here, Cessie,’ he began. ‘Not easy for me either. I never had a real father, you see, not till now. I had a stepfather for a while, of course, but it’s not the same; and anyway, Bill and me, we never got on. I don’t know what you do with a father, how you talk to a father. You’ve got to trust me. I’ll do right by him, I promise you that. But you don’t love a father just because he’s your father. You can’t love someone you don’t know, and I don’t know him. You’ve got to give me time, Cessie.’

  I was still seething, still too angry to turn over. I wanted to, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’d said things I shouldn’t have said, and I knew it. He leant over and kissed the back of my head. ‘I’m not an ogre, Cessie,’ he whispered. ‘Honestly.’ When he said ‘honestly’, he sounded just like Popsicle.

  The next morning I was up late. There was no sound of the radio from Popsicle’s room, so I thought he must be downstairs, having his breakfast already. But I found my mother alone in the kitchen. She was pouring herself a cup of coffee as I came in. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that was some performance last night.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘No, you’re not.’ She was not angry with me, but she was not pleased either. ‘Popsicle up yet?’ she went on. ‘He can do almost everything for himself now, you know, except for cutting his food up. Marvellous how that arm of his has come on. Let’s just hope his memory does the same. Go and see if he’s all right, Cessie, will you?’

  The bathroom door was ajar. He was not in there. There was no reply when I knocked on his bedroom door. I went in. His bed was made. The wardrobe door was open. His clothes were gone, his coat too, and there were no shoes by the bed. He’d gone. Popsicle had gone.

  5 NOWHERE MAN

  MY MOTHER SAT DOWN ON THE BED, THE POINTS of her fingers pressed against her temples, her eyes closed for a moment in concentration. ‘Think,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to think.’

  It came to me at once. ‘Ducks,’ I said. ‘Maybe he’s feeding the ducks.’ We dashed downstairs. We found what we’d hoped to find, that the bag of accumulated bread-crusts we kept for the ducks was no longer hanging on the back of the kitchen door. A further search revealed that his stick was gone too.

  ‘I’ll take the car,’ said my mother. ‘You stay here, in case he comes home. He’ll be in the park, bound to be. Shan’t be long. And don’t worry.’

  She was long and I was worried. It seemed like an age before she came back, but when she did she was alone. I met her at the front door. She had Popsicle’s stick in her hand. ‘He’s been there, but he’s not there any more. I’ve looked everywhere. He left it on the bench. And this too.’ She held out the breadcrust bag. It was empty. ‘I asked around. No one’s seen him. It’s like he’s just disappeared.’

  ‘He can’t have,’ I cried. ‘You can’t just disappear. No one can.’

  She reached out and smoothed my hair tenderly. ‘You’re right, Cessie. We’ll find him, I promise we will. I’ve tried ringing your dad at work, but he’s off somewhere, doing an interview or something. I tried his mobile too. Nothing. Only one thing to do. I’m going down to the police station. You’d better stay here. He’ll probably walk in just as soon as I’ve gone. Worrying won’t help, Cessie. Go and practise your violin or something – it’ll keep your mind off it.’ And she was gone.

  I tried practising. I tried reading. I tried the television. Nothing worked. It was impossible not to think of all the dreadful things that might have happened to Popsicle. He’d had another stroke. He’d been run over. He’d fallen into the canal. Or maybe he’d just gone off as suddenly as he’d arrived, and would never be coming back again.

  As the minutes passed by like hours, I was more and more certain that this was in fact what had happened. Perhaps he’d suddenly remembered where he lived and had just gone home. Miserable though this made me, I consoled myself with the thought that at least he wasn’t hurt, at least he wasn’t dead.

  My mother did come back eventually, and when she did she was beside herself with indignation. ‘If it was a child, they’d be out there looking for him right now – dogs, helicopters, the lot. “How long has he been gone?” he says. “Maybe he’s just wandered off, madam. They d
o, y’know. We can’t go looking for every OAP who decides to take a longer walk than usual, can we now, madam?” God, did I give him an earful! So finally he says, “All right, madam, all right. We’ll give it an hour or two and if he’s still not back then we’ll go looking, how’s that? Meanwhile, I’ll ask the lads to keep an eye out, madam.” I’ll give him madam! Well if they won’t look, I will. I’m going to drive around town till I find him. He can’t have gone far. I want you to stay here, Cessie, and I want you to try your dad, and keep trying. Understand?’ And despite all my protestations, she went running off up the path, leaving me alone in the house again.

  I rang my father every few minutes, both at work and on his mobile. When at long last he answered, it took me a bit by surprise. ‘Popsicle’s gone,’ I said. ‘He’s gone, and we can’t find him.’ He didn’t say anything, so I told him the rest. Even after I’d finished the whole story, he still said nothing.

  ‘Dad?’ I said. ‘You there?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Mum’s gone off looking for him,’ I repeated. ‘And the police won’t do anything.’

  I have no idea what he said, nor to whom he said it, but within five minutes there was a police car outside the house and two policemen at the front door. ‘So you’ve lost your grandaddy, have you?’ said the taller of the two, taking off his cap. The other one had a mermaid tattooed on his arm. ‘Your mum and dad in, are they?’ said the tattooed one. And they walked right past me into the house as if they owned the place. They never asked. They just wandered about the house, peering into this room and that. They even went out into the garden and searched the garden shed. Did they really imagine they’d find Popsicle hiding away in the garden shed?

  My father came home, and then my mother shortly after. There followed a prolonged question-and-answer session around the kitchen table over endless cups of tea, all about Popsicle, where he went, what he did.

  ‘Have you got any photos of him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not one?’

  ‘No. Well, there is one of him as a young man. But it’s in his wallet and he must have his wallet with him.’

  ‘Do you know who his friends are?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘How long has he been living with you?’

  ‘A month or so.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said my father.

  The more we didn’t know, the more strange they seemed to find it all. A third policeman came in, filling the doorway. They had already checked all the hospitals for miles around, he said, and no one of Popsicle’s description had been brought in. No one had seen him. It was just as my mother had said, Popsicle had disappeared.

  She seemed suddenly very dejected. The tattooed policeman leant forward across the table. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘It’s true what they say: no news is good news. You just sit right here, and we’ll keep on looking till we find him.’ He gave me a cheery wink as he stood up again.

  But by six o’clock that evening, after the longest day of my life, there was still no news of Popsicle, good or bad. ‘I need a walk,’ said my mother. ‘I’ve got to get out. I can’t stand any more of this waiting.’

  ‘Nor me,’ I said.

  This time my father stayed by the phone. As we left, he said, ‘He’ll turn up, you’ll see. That old man’s a survivor. He’ll turn up.’ He never called him ‘my father’ or ‘Popsicle’, and I wished he would.

  We ended up in the park – I’m not sure why. There was a large crowd gathered round the duck pond, so we couldn’t even see the bench where we usually sat with Popsicle, nor the pond beyond. We had to force our way through the crowd to see what was going on. There were a couple of policemen holding everyone back, not the same ones who had come to the house. I heard a sudden agitated quacking commotion from the middle of the pond, and a flurry of ducks took off and circled over the park. My mother grasped me by the arm. I looked where she was looking. Out of the pond rose first one head, then two. Frogmen. Frogmen in goggles and wetsuits, with oxygen tanks on their backs. My mother had her hand to her mouth. She knew what I knew, that they were dragging the pond for Popsicle.

  I led her home in tears, and the three of us sat in the kitchen in silence, just waiting, fearing the worst, believing the worst. There were more encouraging words of reassurance from my father, but we didn’t believe them, and I don’t think he did either. I tried to pray as I had in the ambulance. After all, it had worked that time, hadn’t it? But I couldn’t concentrate long enough even to finish a prayer. I had a picture floating in my head that would not go away, a picture of Popsicle, drowned, lying face down in the pond, his hair spread out over the water like golden seaweed.

  Then came the knock on the door. Both my mother and father seemed paralysed, so I had to go and open it myself. It was the police again. This time one of them was a woman, and behind her was the one with the tattoo on his arm.

  ‘May we come in?’ she said. Dark and dreadful words that fell like stones on my heart. Tears choked my throat. They’d found Popsicle, I knew it. They’d found him dead and drowned and I’d never even said goodbye. I took them into the kitchen. ‘We’ve found him,’ said the policewoman. ‘Down by the harbour. He was just sitting there looking at the boats. Just sitting there. He’s fine, fine.’

  My mother was sobbing. I found myself sobbing too and I couldn’t stop myself. My father had his arms round both of us. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he said. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘He’s a very confused old man,’ the policewoman went on. ‘Didn’t seem to know where he was nor how he’d got himself there. We took him off to the hospital. Routine check-up. Can’t be too careful, can you? Not when they get to that age.’

  ‘They’ll be bringing him home soon,’ said the tattooed policeman. ‘All being well, he should be back in time for supper. Bit scatty in the head, I’d say. Bit forgetful like, is he?’

  The ambulance brought Popsicle home from the hospital that same evening. I was overjoyed to see that the neighbours were out in numbers yet again. As we fetched him into the house, I waved regally at Mandy Bethel. I enjoyed that.

  All through supper no one said a word about Popsicle’s disappearance – that had been my mother’s idea. ‘He’ll tell us when he wants to,’ she’d said. Popsicle carried on as if nothing had happened. He sat there, quite at home, waiting for me to cut up his pork chop for him. Then he ate ravenously, chuckling to himself as he chased his peas around his plate with his fork until he’d speared the very last one.

  ‘Gotcha,’ he laughed, popping it in his mouth with a flourish. He pushed his plate away and sat back. There came the moment then when we were all looking at him, and waiting, and he knew well enough what we were waiting for.

  ‘Was I hungry!’ he said. ‘I haven’t eaten since breakfast, you know.’

  ‘You could have come home sooner,’ said my father, and I could sense him reining in his exasperation, with some difficulty. ‘For goodness’ sake, you were gone all day.’

  Popsicle was looking straight at my father as he spoke. ‘What Cessie said last night, I heard every word. I didn’t want to cause any more upsets, that’s all. Time to pack up and go, I thought. So I did. I got up early and I just went. I was sitting there down in the park, feeding the ducks, and I was wondering what to do with myself, where to go. That’s when it came to me. This is just like where I live, I thought, by the water, with ducks and gulls and all sorts. So I went off looking, looking for my place. I thought the best bet would be down by the harbour, along the seafront. I thought I’d maybe see something, something I’d recognise. Where I live, I can see water out of every window. I can smell the sea too, I know I can. So I went looking. Walked miles, I did. I looked at every house along the sea front, in the windows of some of them. Got myself shouted at too. But it wasn’t any good. I didn’t recognise a thing.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ my father said. ‘All right, so you upped and went
, went off looking for your house. But when you couldn’t find it, why didn’t you just come back here? We’ve been worried sick, all of us.’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ said Popsicle. ‘I didn’t know where I was, where I’d come from, or anything. I couldn’t even remember the name of this street, so I couldn’t ask, could I? I mean, you don’t want to look stupid, do you? So I just sat myself down and tried to piece it all together, you know, work it out, make some sense of it. I could see you all up here in my head. I could see this house, this kitchen, my room upstairs, the garden, everything; but I didn’t know where you all were, nor how to get to you. That’s my trouble. Sometimes things are as clear as day, and sometimes . . . well, ever since I was in the hospital . . . You take your mum for instance, Arthur. I can’t picture her like I used to. I know what she looked like from her photo; but I can’t see her up here.’ He tapped his head with his knuckles. ‘When I think of your mum now, it’s not her face that comes into my head, I know it’s not. It’s someone else, always someone else altogether, but I don’t know who.’ For a few moments, he seemed quite unable to find his voice. He looked at us, his eyes brimming with sadness. He was trying to smile, but he couldn’t. ‘A nowhere man, that’s me. A real nowhere man, like the song says.’

  ‘Things’ll come back, Popsicle,’ said my mother. ‘Time’s a great healer. Things’ll sort themselves out.’ She reached out and took his hand in hers. ‘You’re family now,’ she said. ‘You’re family, and you’re staying. You belong here with us. We want you to stay as long as you like. Isn’t that right, Arthur?’

  We had to wait some moments for my father to reply, and when he did it was not at all fulsome. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course we do.’ That was all. I was angry at him again, angry at his thinly disguised reluctance. Maybe he had his reasons, but he could pretend a little, couldn’t he? Just to make Popsicle feel at home and welcome. He could pretend.