The Classic Morpurgo Collection (six novels)

by Michael Morpurgo

  Afterword

  It is estimated that between 1947 and 1967 somewhere between 7000 and 11,000 British children were sent to Australia alone.

  It was at one time thought convenient to pack up your troublesome people, whether they were convicts or simply unwanted or orphaned children, and ship them off to what were then the colonies – mostly Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

  The first white Australians were convicts settled there forcibly in 1788. It was a form of banishment.

  The banishment of children, which went on for centuries and reached its modern peak in the years after the Second World War, was in many ways just as cruel, but it was sometimes well meant. Children who had nothing could be provided with a new land, a new family, some prospects of living a happy life, away from the seething slums of Britain’s cities. And many of them did get lucky, landed up in the right place with genuinely kind people who looked after them and cared for them. However just as many did not. One former child migrant said, “Most of us have been left with broken hearts and broken lives.”* Cruelty, abuse and exploitation were tragically all too common.

  Another wrote this:

  “For the vast majority of former child migrants the most often asked question is ‘Who am I?’ Most of us were born in the British Isles of British parents. Our culture, heritage and traditions are British. Our nationality, our rights and our privileges were our inheritance. Unable to make a reasoned decision we were transported 20,000 kilometres to the other side of the world. Our crime for the most part was that we were the children of broken relationships. Our average age was eight years and nine months. In this one act, we were stripped of our parents and our brothers and sisters. We were stripped of our grandparents and extended families. We were stripped of nationality, culture and birthright. Many of us were stripped of our family name and even our birth date. We were stripped of our personhood, human rights and our dignity. We were referred to as migrant boy number ‘so and so’ or migrant girl number ‘so and so’. And so we arrived, strangers in a lost land, lost and with no way back.”*

  It was because of harrowing accounts like this that

  I wrote my story.

  Michael Morpurgo

  If you or your family are interested in locating a former child migrant, or you are a former migrant seeking your family, you can obtain a document describing the available resources (including a contact database and financial support) from the UK Department of Health.

  As a clickable file:

  www.dh.gov.uk/assetRoot/04/09/00/30/04090030.pdf

  As a text-only file:

  www.dh.gov.uk/assetRoot/04/09/00/31/04090031.pdf

  * Source: The House of Commons Health Select Committee’s report On the Welfare of Former British Child Migrants, 1998

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks to Alex Whitworth and Peter Crozier, mariners extraordinaire and quite ancient too, whose emails while circumnavigating the world in their yacht Berrimilla in 2004 informed and inspired this story. Thanks also to Graham Barrett and Isabella Whitworth for all their wonderful help and encouragement. And of course I mustn’t forget Samuel Taylor Coleridge…

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2 - Grandpa’s Story

  Chapter 3

  There’s an old green Fordson tractor in the back of Grandpa’s barn, always covered in cornsacks. When I was very little, I used to go in there, pull off the cornsacks, climb up and drive it all over the farm. I’d be gone all morning sometimes, but they always knew where to find me. I’d be ploughing or tilling or mowing, anything I wanted. It didn’t matter to me that the engine didn’t work, that one of the iron wheels was missing, that I couldn’t even move the steering wheel.

  Up there on my tractor, I was a farmer, like my Grandpa, and I could go all over the farm, wherever I wanted. When I’d finished, I always had to put the cornsacks back and cover it up. Grandpa said I had to, so that it didn’t get dusty. That old tractor, he said, was very important, very special. I knew that already of course, but it wasn’t until many years later that I discovered just how important, just how special it was.

  I come from a family of farmers going back generations and generations, but I wouldn’t have known much about it if Grandpa hadn’t told me. My own mother and father never seemed that interested in family roots, or maybe they just preferred not to talk about them. My mother grew up on the farm. She was the youngest of four sisters, and none of them had stayed on the farm any longer than they’d had to. School took her away to college.

  College took her off to London, to teaching first, then to meeting my father, a townie through and through, and one who made no secret of his dislike for the countryside and everything to do with it.

  ‘All right in pictures, I suppose,’ he’d say, ‘just as long as you don’t have to smell it or walk in it.’ And he’d say that in front of Grandpa, too.

  I have always felt they were a little ashamed of Grandpa and his old-fashioned ways, and I never really understood why – until recently, that is. When I found out, it wasn’t Grandpa I was ashamed of.

  I always loved going down to Devon, to Burrow, his old thatched house at the bottom of a rutty lane. He was born there. He’d never lived anywhere else, nor had any desire to do so. He’s the only person I’ve ever met who seems utterly contented with his own place on earth, with the life he’s lived. That’s not to say that he never grumbles. He does – about the weather, about his television reception – he loves detective series, whodunnits, police dramas. He’ll curse the foxes when they tip over his dustbins, and shout abuse at the jets when they come screaming low over the chimney pots. But he never ever complains about his lot in life. Best of all, he never pretends to be someone he isn’t, and what’s more he doesn’t want me to be anyone I’m not. I like that in him, I always have. That’s maybe why I’ve spent so many of my school holidays with him down on the farm in Devon.

  Sometimes he’ll tell me how things were when he was young. He doesn’t say things were better then, or worse. He just talks about how they were. I think it’s because he loves to remember.

  Grandpa loves his swallows. We’d often watch them together as they skimmed low over the fields and he’d shake his head in wonder. He once told me why it was that he loved swallows so much. That was when he first told me about his father, my great-grandfather, or ‘the Corporal’, as everyone in the village called him. And that’s when I first heard about Joey, too.

  ‘Swallows,’ Grandpa began, settling back in his chair. I knew I was in for a story. ‘Now they must’ve been the very first bird I ever set eyes on. And that’s funny, that is. My father, when he was a lad, used to go round the farms seeking out all the sparrows’ nests and crows’ nests and rooks’ nests. He’d pinch the eggs, see; and he’d get money for that, for every egg in his hat. It wasn’t a lot, but every penny helped. Sparrows and crows and rooks, they was a terrible nuisance for the farmers. They’d soon get at the corn if you let them. Anyway, Father got himself into some trouble, and it was all on account of the swallows. He had a friend – I can’t remember names, never could – but a school friend anyhow; and this lad, he went and robbed a swallow’s nest, silly monkey, instead of a sparrow’s nest like he should have. Well, Father saw what he’d done, and he saw red. He gave him an awful licking, so the lad went home with a bleeding nose. Father went and put the swallow’s eggs back. Next thing Father knows, the boy’s mother comes round and boxes his ears for him, and he gets sent to bed without any tea. Not hardly fair when you think about it, is it? Anyway, putting the eggs back didn’t do no good. Mother bird never came back.

  ‘Father was always getting into scrapes when he was a lad. But the worst scrape he ever got hisself into was the war, First World War. And just like with the swallow’s eggs, he didn’t want to fight anyone. It just happened. This time it was all on account of the horse. See, he didn’t go off to the war because he wanted to fight for King and Country like lots of oth
ers did. It wasn’t like that. He went because his horse went, because Joey went.

  ‘Father was just a farm boy when the war broke out; fourteen, that’s all. Like me, he didn’t get a lot of schooling. He never reckoned much to schooling and that. He said you could learn most of what was worth knowing from keeping your eyes and ears peeled. Best way of learning, he always said, was doing. He was right enough there, I reckon. Anyway, that’s by the by. He had this young colt, broke him to halter, broke him to ride, broke him to plough. Joey, he called him. He had four white socks on him, a white cross on his forehead, and he was bay. Turned out to be his best friend in all the world. They had an old mare, too. Zoey, she was called; and the two of them ploughed like they’d been born to it, which they was, I suppose. Weren’t a team of working horses in the parish to touch them. Joey was strong as an ox, and gentle as a lamb. Zoey had the brains, kept the furrow straight as an arrow.

  But it was Joey Father loved best. If ever he got sick, Father would bed down with him in his stable and never leave his side. He loved that horse like a brother, more maybe.

  ‘Anyway, one day, a few months after the war started, Father goes off to market to sell some fat sheep. In them days of course, you had to drive them down the road to market. No lorries, nothing like that. So he was gone most of the day. Meanwhile the army’s come to the village looking for good sturdy horses, and they’re paying good money too. They needed all the horses they could get for the cavalry, for pulling the guns maybe, or the ammunition wagons, ambulances too. Most things was horse-drawn in them days. Father comes back from market, and sees Joey being taken away. It’s too late to stop it. It was his own father that did it. He’d gone and sold Joey to the army for forty pounds. More like forty pieces of silver, I’d say.

  ‘Father always said he was drunk and he didn’t mean no harm by it, but I don’t reckon that’s any sort of excuse, do you?

  And do you know, I never heard Father say a harsh word about it after. He was like that. Kindest man that ever lived, my father. Big and gentle, just like Joey. But he had spirit all right.

  Couple of weeks later he’s upped and gone, gone to join up, gone to find Joey. He had to tell the recruiting sergeant he was sixteen, but he wasn’t of course. He was tall enough though, and his voice was broke. So off he goes to France. Gone for a soldier at fourteen.

  ‘Now there’s millions of men over there, millions of horses, too. Needle in a haystack you might think, and you’d be right. It took him three years of looking, but he never gave up. Just staying alive was the difficult bit. Hell on earth, he called it. Always waiting, waiting to go up to the front line, waiting in the trenches with the whizzbangs and shells bursting all around you, waiting for the whistle to send you out over the top and across No-Man’s-Land, waiting for the bullet that had your name on it.

  ‘He was wounded a couple of times in the leg, lucky wounds, he said.

  You were always a lot safer in hospital than in the trenches. But his ears started ringing with all the thunder of the shells, and he had that trouble all his life afterwards. He saw things out there in France, terrible things that don’t bear thinking about, his friends blowed up, horses drowned dead in the mud before his very eyes. And all the while he never forgot Joey, never forgot what he’d come for.

  ‘Then, at first light one morning, he’s on “stand-to” in the trenches waiting for the Germans to attack, and he looks through the mist and there’s this horse wandering around, lost in No-Man’s-Land. Course, Father never thinks twice. He loves horses, all horses, so he’s got to fetch him in, hasn’t he? Quick as a twick he’s up over the top and running.

  ‘Trouble is, there’s a German chap doing just the very same thing. So the two of them met, right out there in the middle, both armies looking on. They tossed for it, honest they did. They tossed for the horse, and Father won. And…you guessed it, when they got that horse back and cleaned him down, he had the four white socks, he had the white cross on his forehead, and he was bay. He was Joey. Takes some believing, I know. But it’s true enough, I’m telling you.

  ‘And that weren’t the end of it, not by a long chalk. When the war was over, the army decided to sell off all the old warhorses for meat. That’s right, they were going to kill them. Kill the lot of them. They were going to kill Joey. After all he’d been through, all he’d done, they were going to have him slaughtered for meat. So Father did the only thing he could. He bought Joey back off the army with his own money, all the pay he’d saved up, and brought him home safe and sound at the end of the war. ‘They had banners and bunting and flags up all over the village. Hatherleigh Silver Band too, just for him. I seen the photograph. Everyone was there, whole parish, shouting and cheering: “Welcome home Corporal! Welcome home Joey!” Always called him Corporal. Everyone did.

  ‘But once the celebrations were over, Father went straight back to work just like before the war – ploughing, reaping, milking, shepherding – and of course he had his Joey with him. Everyone said he was so fond of that horse he’d never marry. Not room enough in his heart, they said. They were wrong, weren’t they? Else I wouldn’t hardly be here, would I?

  ‘He’d had his eye on Maisie Coppledick ever since school. More important, she’d had her eye on him; so it was all right. Married on May Day in 1919 in Iddesleigh church. It rained cats and dogs, so Father said; and they moved down here to Burrow next day.

  ‘One year later, give or take a week or two, and I come along. There was a swallow’s nest under the offices – the eaves – right above the window of my bedroom where Mother would sit with me that first summer of my life. Always loved swallows I have, since the day I was born. Always will, too.’

  Grandpa loves to tell his stories, and when he does, I love to listen. But it isn’t just the stories I like – to be honest, I’ve heard most of them several times before – it’s the way he tells them. He talks with his eyebrows, with his hands. And he’s good at listening, and that makes me want to talk. He listens with his eyebrows, too. We just get on. We always have. I don’t know why really. After all, we were born into two completely different worlds. He’s an old country mouse through and through, and I’m a young town mouse – bus at the end of the road, supermarket round the corner, leisure centre, that sort of thing. I don’t much like The Bill or Columbo or Agatha Christie films; but when I’m staying with Grandpa I watch them because I like watching him watching them, his eyebrows twitchy with excitement, his hands gripping the arms of the chair.

  But then there are times when he can be a right old goat. On days like that I just keep out of his way, and he keeps out of mine. He’d get to be suddenly sad and silent and never looking at me, and I’d know then. When he didn’t polish his boots last thing at night – that was a bad sign. He wouldn’t ever have the television on when he was like that. He’d just sit and stare into the fire. He could barely drag himself out of his chair to shut up the chickens at night. He was angry or sad about something, but I didn’t know what, and I knew better than to ask.

  And then last summer, when I’d just finished school for the last time, exams all over and done with, and I was down on the farm for a while, he told me what it was.

  Until now, Grandpa had hardly ever said a word about my grandmother. He had a photo of her on the dresser in the kitchen, and I knew she’d died before I was born, that he’d been alone for some years. I knew nothing more about her, and I didn’t like to ask. He was in one of his deep grumps, sitting by the stove in his holey socks, when I came in for my tea. I’d been cleaning down the cowyard. I didn’t expect him to speak.

  ‘I was thinking about her on the dresser,’ he said. It took me a moment or two to work out who he meant. ‘Be twenty years today. She went and left me twenty years ago today. Everything to me, she was, and she goes and dies on me. And you know what? We was in the middle of something, something we hadn’t finished. And she took ill and died. She shouldn’t have. She shouldn’t have.’

  ‘What were you in the middle of?’
I asked.

  He looked at me and tried to smile. ‘You’re a good lad. Come to think of it, you’re something like her, y’know. You let a fellow be when he wants it. There’s others that have guessed it, your Mum and Dad for sure; but her on the dresser, she’s the only one I ever told. I told her before I married her, and she said it didn’t matter, that there was more important things about people than that. Nothing to be ashamed of, she said. Bless her heart. She was shamed right enough, she must’ve been. Course, once I had her with me, I didn’t need to do anything about it, did I? I mean, she did it all for me. And I had all the excuses I needed, didn’t I? There was the farm. I was out working morning, noon and night; and there was the children growing up and mouths to feed and rent to pay. Oh yes, I had all the excuses; but truth of it was that I just didn’t bother.