Читать книгу Boy Giant - Michael Morpurgo - Страница 12

Sure enough, after a year or more of wandering, one day we came over a hill, and there – just as Mother had promised – was the sea, and some houses and people, and, like a miracle, there was the boat waiting for us. Mother told me, her arm around me, that God was good to us, and that I should always believe that.

She had little enough left to sell, the bracelets on her arms, the rings on her fingers. They were enough to pay the men to allow me on to their boat, but not Mother. None of her tears, nor mine, were enough to persuade them to let her go with me.

I had to go on alone, she told me. She would follow on later. We would find one another in England. She promised me faithfully. And Mother always keeps her promises.

I remember her last words to me. ‘Go to your Uncle Said in his café in Mevagissey,’ she told me. ‘Fore Street. Mevagissey. Remember, Fore Street. Remember, Mevagissey. Say it over and over in your head, Omar, so that you do not ever forget. Fore Street, Mevagissey. Fore Street, Mevagissey. Wait for me there. I will come. Go now, Omar. Say to the people in England that you are his nephew, and they will let you stay. Uncle Said told me they would do this. Tell them where he lives, where he works in his café. They will let you stay with him. Do not worry. They will have smiling eyes, and there is no war there either. This way you will live, and if you live, so will I. We will meet again, we will, God willing.’

I clung to her. I cried into her.

She whispered in my ear that she loved me more than life itself, but I had to be a man now like Father had been, that I had to be brave like Hanan, that I was to go and cry no more. ‘Smile for me,’ she said, ‘so I will remember you this way.’ I tried, tried so hard, but I did not succeed. My tears would not let me.

The last time I saw Mother she was standing there on the shore watching the boat take me away. She was becoming smaller before my eyes. Soon she was not there at all, and then nor was the shore.

I was in a big rubber boat with an engine that coughed and spluttered. The boat was so full of people that it was difficult for all of us to find anywhere to sit down. To begin with the sea was calm about us, lapping but calm. People were telling one another that it wasn’t far, that it was a good boat, that we would soon be there, soon be safe.

I had seen the sea in photographs, on films, and it had always been blue. But this sea was not blue. It was grey, and wide, and darkening, and threatening, and seemed to go on forever into the distance, where it became sky, a sky that was as grey as the sea.

I do not know how many nights and days I spent on that boat. I found at last a place to sit on the side. There I passed the long cold hours, trying all the while to calm my fears. I made myself imagine Mevagissey, the place where I was going. I tried to think of Uncle Said in his café in England. I had never met him. I had seen his photograph, the one Mother kept with her all the time. I had spoken to him only once, a long time before, on Skype. But then he was pixelated, so I could not see him at all well. I could tell that he had a moustache, and not much else. I remember his voice quite well, though. He told me I should come to see him one day, and help him in his café.

‘I’m coming, Uncle Said!’ I shouted out loud. ‘Fore Street, Mevagissey! Fore Street, Mevagissey!’ Some people around me on that boat looked at me as if I had gone mad. But I didn’t mind what they thought. I was going to Mevagissey! Fore Street, Mevagissey!