Boy Giant

by Michael Morpurgo

  The wicket was more bumpy on Blufescu than on Lilliput, so the Lilliputian children did not like it much over there because the ball bounced awkwardly. But crossing the stone causeway across the sea was always an adventure, for all the children on both islands. They loved ‘walking on the sea’ as they called it.

  The Blufescuan children took to the game quickly and were soon playing just as well as the Lilliputians. In these early games, I always mixed the children up so there was not too much island rivalry between them. I could nip arguments in the bud. None of them argued with the umpire, with me – I was too big. And these two always came with me, didn’t you? Natoban helped me coach the children – he bowled as fast as anyone, but not always accurately. And Zaya, although she did not like cricket at all, was there alongside me, was always with me too, helping to explain the rules to the little ones, and calming things down quickly before any quarrels could bubble up.

  I think it was these cricket games between the children, as much as anything, as much as the new causeway itself, that brought the two islands so quickly together again after the bad times, after living so long apart. Parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, came across the channel to watch, got talking together, laughing together. Old hurts were forgotten or forgiven. New friends were made. Old friends discovered one another again.

  And the boatbuilding helped too. The sailmakers from both islands came together on Blufescu, to work on the sails for my boat. They had not made sails this huge before – they had to build special sail lofts on Blufescu to accommodate them. It all took many skilled hands and a very long time. But Lilliputians and Blufescuans worked in the sail lofts on Blufescu together, side by side, to get them ready.

  Meanwhile on Lilliput – where there were many more fully grown trees than on Blufescu ready to be felled – the boatbuilders from both islands gathered in the harbour every day to make a boat. The biggest boat that had been made on the islands, Gran Baruta told us, since the one that had been built all those years before for Gulliver. Her grandfather himself, she told me proudly, had helped to build that one. He had once walked the whole length of her. That boat measured over four hundred of his steps.

  I could help to carry some of the timber from the forest to the harbour, but that was all I could do. I was no boatbuilder. Every day I would watch my boat taking shape above the slipway in the harbour on Lilliput. Impressed as I was with all the skill and hard work I was witnessing, how the people from both islands were cooperating so well in the building of it, I was worried. Half the forest on the island had already been cut down to build the boat, and yet I could already see that when it was finished it would be no more than a large rowing boat, less than half the length of the rubber dinghy that had only just held together long enough to bring me to Lilliput four years before. I could not tell them, after all their hard work, that to go to sea in such a small boat, however well built, to face the towering waves of the open ocean was not likely to end well.

  Neither could I tell Mother at night-times of my anxieties, just in case these two, Zaya and Natoban, my two eavesdropping friends here, were listening outside again – and anyway I did not want to worry her. This may sound silly, I know. But during my years on Lilliput, hope had turned to belief. Even though she had never once replied to me, there were times when I had truly come to believe that Mother really was hearing every word I spoke to her. She may have been hundreds of miles away, but I was sure she was listening to me. So I kept my worst fears to myself. I told no one.

  But Zaya and Natoban, these two dear friends on my shoulders, these two knew me too well by now for me to be able to pretend. They knew my fears. They kept reassuring me that my boat was going to be so well made, so big, that no wave could overturn her, that she would be unsinkable. They were with me that great day, as I stood watching the boat being launched, as she slid down the slipway into the water, as the rudder was installed in its place, the mast raised and the sails brought out and set for the first time. She was strong and sturdy, and she was made with love and care. She would not sink, I told myself, she could not, she must not.

  Everyone was there to witness the launch that day. Gran Baruta named the boat Gulliver, to thunderous cheers from all around the harbour. And Zaya said to me, I remember, from exactly where she is now, sitting up on my left shoulder: ‘Don’t worry, Owzat, she may be small but she will float. She will dance over the waves. Do not worry. She will carry you wherever you want to go.’

  Thousands of voices were cheering that day, chanting my name, ‘Owzat! Son of Gulliver! Owzat!’

  I looked down at the brave little boat with her wonderfully carved prow, her oars waiting for me, and her white sail set high and whipping and clapping in the wind. She was ready to go, but the truth was that I was far from ready to go.

  Day after day Zaya and Natoban took me out in the boat, and showed me how to row, how to hoist the sail, how to tack with the wind, to use the rudder. They showed me how to steer into the waves, warned me never to be caught sideways by a big one. They taught me not to be afraid of the sea, but to know her and respect her and understand her.

  What a gift the islanders had made me. What work they had put into it. But I had known all along of course that this was a parting gift, and that was troubling me more and more. My longing to leave was growing daily, as was my reluctance to go. I kept telling myself, and Zaya and Natoban, that I was only waiting for a fair wind and for the seas to calm. But I think they knew how much I was dreading leaving them, and leaving Lilliput, where I had been so loved, where I had grown up and become tall, where there were no strangers, where the people lived for one another, and for peace – and where they loved cricket too. It was a world I loved.

  There were still days when I made up my mind to stay, that this was the place for me forever, that these were the people I would live amongst all my life. I knew I would be returning to a very different kind of world altogether. In the end, it was only Mother who made me decide to go. One night as I lay in my bed, thinking of her, of Father, of Hanan, I was sure I could hear her voice in my head. I was trying to explain to her how difficult I was finding it to bring myself to leave. And then she spoke to me. She was telling me she had been waiting every day for me to come, longing to see me again, to hear my voice.

  ‘I’m coming, Mother,’ I called to her, called out loud. ‘I am coming! I promise. I will leave tomorrow!’ I just hoped Zaya and Natoban were not listening outside.

  I wanted no one to know, especially these two, because I could not face saying my goodbyes. I would creep out at dawn, go down to the boat and sail away. It would be better that way. But when I stepped outside my house the next morning, Zaya and Natoban were there waiting for me.

  ‘We overheard him,’ Zaya told J.J. ‘We were there the evening before listening outside the window. We heard every word.’

  ‘And we told everyone,’ Natoban added.

  ‘Which was why they were all waiting for us down at the harbour,’ I went on …

  … All the fishing boats from Blufescu and Lilliput were there, filling the harbour, all of them crammed with little people, all of them silent. Gran Baruta was there on the harbourside, Tapit at her side.

  ‘Listen all around you,’ she said. ‘It is the sound of our silence, and our silence speaks a thousand words, words of love, and thanks. Go, Son of Gulliver, go safe. Go east always, towards the rising sun, as Gulliver did. He was not just a good man, but a fine navigator too. He had sailed the world. He knew these things. Go east, dear Son of Gulliver. And come back whenever you want to. You will always have a home here. We will tell your story to our children and they will tell it to their children. You will never be forgotten.’

  For a while, I had no voice to reply.

  Then, all I could think to say was: ‘And one day I will tell your story too.’

  I looked around for Zaya and Natoban – to say goodbye to them – but they were nowhere to be seen. In a way I was glad of it. These two good companions, who ha
d hardly left my side all these years, had not been just guardians, but my family. I had a brother now, and another sister. Just to see them at that moment might have been enough to change my mind.

  Maybe they knew that.

  ‘We did, big brother,’ said Zaya.

  ‘Yes. We did,’ agreed Natoban. ‘We knew.’

  As I stepped into the boat I saw that she was piled at one end, under the shelter, with provisions of all kinds, and at the other end she was stacked with barrels of water. There was barely room in the middle of the boat for me to sit down and row. I looked up at the crowd that lined the harbour, the children, my cricketing children, sitting on the walls, their faces filled with sadness. I had to say something else to them, and I could think of only one word to say. I lifted my hat, then with a great shout of ‘Owzat!’ I threw it high in the air.

  The sadness all around me turned at once to laughter. The silence broke into echoing cheers of ‘Owzat! Owzat!’

  I took to my oars and rowed my way through all the boats that had crowded into the harbour. I went carefully, for one knock from my sturdy rowing boat would have sunk any one of them. In front of me, all around me, the little people were scattering petals and flowers on the water. I rowed out of the harbour through a sea of colour of orange and magenta; and then, once clear of the little boats, I began to pull hard for the open ocean.

  The last I heard of the little people of Lilliput and Blufescu, they were singing, and faint though it was, I could just make out Mother’s lullaby song, my song, their song now. But in no time at all I could hear them no longer, nor see them. They were gone. Soon enough the two islands were no more than two distant shadows on the horizon, then one shadow. Then nothing. I was out on the open sea, alone.

  There was a good breeze. So I decided to ship my oars and sail by the wind. I wasn’t having to try to remember everything Zaya and Natoban had taught me in my sailing lessons. I was doing everything instinctively – you were good teachers, you two. This vast empty sea, which had once held such terrors for me on my last voyage, was no longer my enemy. She was giving me her wind, and her waves and her tide. She was helping me home.

  But I was already regretting that I had not given myself the chance to say a proper goodbye to my two best friends, when I thought I heard the voice of Zaya calling me. Then I was hearing two voices. They were calling me together. I was quite sure at first I was imagining their voices, that it must be the wind in the sails, or some seabird, or that my ears were playing tricks on me. But wind, I thought, doesn’t whistle in words. And birds don’t speak in words. I was hearing words, real words!

  I was hearing, ‘Owzat! Owzat! Son of Gulliver!’ And: ‘Fore Street, Mevagissey, Fore Street, Mevagissey.’

  Then I saw them both climbing up my legs, out from amongst the water barrels and on to my knees. There they were, standing there, laughing, and then I was laughing with them. It was such a reunion. I was full of questions and they were full of answers.

  ‘Our turn, our turn!’ Natoban cried, shushing me. ‘We asked Gran Baruta,’ he explained to J.J. ‘It was Zaya’s idea. She said you weren’t a good enough sailor to go out on your own. And I agreed. So did Gran Baruta. “Go and look after him,” she told us, “as he has looked after us.”’

  ‘So here we are,’ Zaya said, joining in. ‘And the three of us sailed away, always towards the east, just as Gulliver had done before, waking every morning to look for land on the horizon, land that we hoped would soon be England. We had days of perfect weather, stiff breezes and no storms. We sped along under a full sail, hearts full of hope, happy to be together. We saw dolphins, we saw flying fish, we saw gannets. All was going so well.’

  Natoban, I could see, was aching to take over the story again. They talked over each other for a while, but Zaya was not giving way to him. ‘But then one afternoon,’ she said, ‘the waves began to heave, and the wind got up, and the clouds were gathering, and the thunder was roaring. The world darkened around us, and lightning lit up the night sky. Our little boat rode the waves well, but the sea was coming in over the side more and more all the time. All night Owzat clung to the rudder, doing all he could to keep the bow into the towering waves, climbing up so steeply sometimes that we thought we must overturn. We were hanging on for dear life. All the time the boat was filling, and was lower and lower in the water. Natoban and I, we stayed deep inside the pocket of your coat. We wanted to get out, to help, but you said it was too dangerous and we had to stay where we were. And it was true of course, the smallest wave could have swept us overboard.’

  We told the last of our story together – the three of us in turn.

  ‘And it was just as well,’ I said, ‘that you were deep down in my pocket, because when at last it did happen, and the boat was knocked over, at least we were together. I managed to cling on to the side of the boat and somehow found the strength to right it. I hauled myself up. I thought I’d lost you both, till you crawled laughing and spluttering out of my pocket. We just lay there in the bottom of the boat, exhausted, and holding on to one another, frightened to let go.’

  ‘We were alive, but only just,’ Natoban went on. ‘All our food and water were gone. The mast and the sail were gone. We’d lost our oars. We were lying there waiting for the next big wave that would finish us, waiting for the end.’

  ‘We held you close,’ said Zaya, ‘And you held us close.’

  ‘These two were both drifting in and out of sleep,’ I told J.J. ‘I remember thinking we would all of us drown in our sleep, and never wake again. I would not see Mother, so she would never know how hard we had tried to get to England to Fore Street, Mevagissey, to find her. I was filled with sorrow at the thought of Mother and Uncle Said, and how they would be waiting for me all their lives and how I would never come. But at least, I thought, we three friends were doing this together. We would die together, and there was comfort in that, great comfort.’

  The next thing I knew, Zaya and Natoban were yelling at me, pinching my earlobes, trying to shake me awake. There was sun on my face, warming wonderful sun. I sat up. The sea was like glass all around. Not a breath of wind. Our boat lay quite still in the water. And Zaya and Natoban were shouting at me to get up, to turn around, to look.

  ‘Over there!’ they were shouting. ‘A boat, a boat! Look! Look!’

  And there it was, a boat, no more than a stone’s throw away across the water. There was music playing. She was a rowing boat, but bigger, much bigger than ours, and there was a covered shelter at one end, like an open cabin. And she was yellow, bright yellow like the sun. And there was someone in the boat, someone in a bright yellow cagoule, as yellow as the boat.

  And that was you, J.J. You were rowing across towards us. But you know that, don’t you? So here we are, and that’s our story.

  All the way through our story, J.J. had scarcely taken her eyes off us. She sat there, sometimes nursing her bandaged wrist, listening in amazement and wonder at everything we were telling her. She told me later that if Zaya and Natoban had not been there with me, she would not have believed a word of it. And they both told me later how, looking at J.J. during the story, they could never have ever imagined there could be another giant anywhere in the world as big as I was – and she was bigger. I had already warned them, on our voyage across the sea, that when we reached England they would find themselves in a land of giants, most of them far bigger than me. But J.J. was the first one of these giants they had met and they were in awe of her, as I was, especially when she told us how and why she happened to be there all alone out on the ocean.

  She certainly had a very different way from me of telling a story. We had lived ours as we told it to her. I think all three of us were seeing it again in our minds. We weren’t telling it in any way to make it more exciting. I knew I told it as I did because I wanted to remember it, remember everything and everyone. But she told hers in a very matter-of-fact way, as if what she was doing, all she had done, was the most normal thing in the world.

&nb
sp; I think J.J. felt she had to tell her story, because we had told her ours. But she also explained that because we were all going to be on a small boat together for some while, we really ought to get to know something about her, about who she was and why she was there. Compared to our story, hers was quite ordinary, she said.

  It was anything but ordinary. She began with her full name.

  ‘My name is Jillian Forsyth Wood. A mouthful, isn’t it? My dad always called me J.J., and I loved that. So I made everyone call me J.J. You see? Ordinary. You are Owzat, Son of Gulliver, or Mountain Man. You are Zaya and Natoban, and I am just plain J.J. I am nearly twenty-three years old – twenty-one when I left home. And I am here because of my dad. That sounds silly, doesn’t it? We are all here because of our fathers and mothers. You, Omar, Owzat, Son of Gulliver, you are certainly out here in the ocean because of your mother. I am out here on this boat because of my father.

  ‘I was at university when he became ill. Dad was the reason I always loved boats and rowing. When I was very little, he used to take me out on the river in a rowing boat – it was on the River Avon in Stratford, where we lived then. I loved rowing at once, took to it, he often said, like a duck to water. Then, a year or two later, when we went to live by the sea in Salcombe – that’s in Devon – he’d take me out sailing. I was still quite young. He always said I could sail a boat before I could walk. Almost true but not quite. Anyway, after that I discovered I was only truly happy when I was out on the water, messing about in boats, any boats, sailing, rowing, didn’t matter.

  ‘At university I was supposed to be studying law, but I preferred to be out there rowing with my friends on the river. I loved racing against other crews, eight of us pulling together, powering through the water. And it turned out I was becoming quite good at it, good enough to win races, good enough in the end to row in my university crew. I was so happy, on cloud nine.