Читать книгу Shadow - Michael Morpurgo, Michael Morpurgo - Страница 9

“And They Keep Kids in There?”

Matt

I was worried about how Grandpa might react, but it was worth a try, I thought.

“Grandpa?” I said. “I’ve been thinking about Aman. I mean, maybe we could find out. Maybe you could ring up, or something, and see if he’s still there. And if he is, then you could go, Grandpa. You could go and see Aman instead of me, couldn’t you?”

“But I hardly know him, do I?” Grandpa replied. “What would I say?”

I could tell he didn’t much like the idea. So I didn’t push it. You couldn’t push Grandpa, everyone in the family knew that. As Mum often said, he could be a stubborn old cuss. So we sat there in silence, but all the time I knew he was thinking it over.

Grandpa said nothing more about it that night, nor at breakfast the next morning. I thought that either he’d forgotten all about it, or he’d already made up his mind he didn’t want to do it. Either way, I didn’t feel I could mention it again. And anyway, by now I think I had almost given up on the idea myself.

It was part of Grandpa’s daily routine, whatever the weather, to get up early and take Dog for a walk along the river meadows to Grantchester – his ‘constitutional’, he called it. And I know he always liked me to come with him when I was staying. I didn’t much like getting up early, but once I was out there, I loved the walks, especially on misty mornings like this one.

There was no one about, except a rowing boat or two, and ducks, lots of ducks. There were cows in the meadows, so I had to keep Dog on the lead. I was having a bit of a struggle hanging on to him. There was always some rabbit hole he just had to stay behind to investigate, or some molehill he insisted he must make friends with. He was pulling all the time.

“Funny coincidence though,” Grandpa said suddenly.

“What is?” I asked.

“That Yarl’s Wood place you were talking about last night. I think that could be the detention centre place Grandma used to visit, years ago, before she got ill. My memory’s not what it was, but I think it was called Yarl’s Wood – that’s probably how I knew about it. She was a sort of befriender there.”

“A befriender?”

“Yes,” Grandpa said. “She’d go in and talk to the people in there – you know, the asylum seekers, to cheer them up a bit, because they were going through hard times. She did that a lot in prisons all her life. But she never said much about it, said it upset her too much to talk about it. Once a week or so, she’d go off and make someone a little happier for a while. She was like that. She always said I should do it too, that I’d be good at it. But I never had her courage. It’s the idea of being locked up, I suppose, even if you know you can leave whenever you want to. How silly is that?”

“Do you know what Aman wrote in his letter, Grandpa?” I said. “He told me there’s six locked doors and a barbed wire fence, between him and the world outside. He counted them.”

That was the moment we turned and looked at one another, and I knew then that Grandpa had made up his mind he was going to do it. We never got to Grantchester. We turned round at once and went home, and Dog did not like that one bit.

Grandpa had been a journalist before he retired, so he knew how to find out about these things. As soon as we got back into the house, he was on the phone. He discovered that in order to visit Mrs Khan and Aman in Yarl’s Wood, he had to write a formal letter, asking permission. It took a few days before the reply came back.

The good news was that they were still there, and the people at Yarl’s Wood said that Grandpa could come on Wednesday, in two days’ time it was, and that visiting times were between two and five in the afternoon. I wrote Aman a letter at once telling him Grandpa was coming to visit him. I hoped he’d write back or phone. But he didn’t, and I couldn’t understand that at all.

All the way there I could see Grandpa was a bit nervous. He kept saying how he wished he had never agreed to do it in the first place. Dog was in the back seat, leaning his head on Grandpa’s shoulder watching the road in front, as he always did. “I think Dog would drive this car himself if you let him,” I said, trying to cheer Grandpa up a bit.

“I wish you could come in with me, Matt,” he said.

“Me too,” I told him. “But you’ll be fine, Grandpa. Just go for it. And you’ll like Aman. He’ll remember you, I know he will. And you’ve got the Monopoly, haven’t you? He’ll beat you, Grandpa. But don’t worry about that. He beats everyone. And tell him to write to me, will you? Or text, or phone?”

We were driving up a long straight hill. It seemed to lead to nowhere but the sky. Only when we reached the top of the rise did we see the gates, and then the barbed wire fence all around.

“And they keep kids in there?” Grandpa breathed.