Times of War Collection

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Michael Morpurgo. Times of War Collection

Private Peaceful. An Elephant in the Garden Shadow. Michael Morpurgo

CONTENTS

FIVE PAST TEN

TWENTY TO ELEVEN

NEARLY QUARTER PAST ELEVEN

TEN TO MIDNIGHT

TWENTY-FOUR MINUTES PAST TWELVE

NEARLY FIVE TO ONE

TWENTY-EIGHT MINUTES PAST ONE

FOURTEEN MINUTES PAST TWO

A MINUTE PAST THREE

TWENTY-FIVE PAST THREE

NEARLY FOUR O’CLOCK

FIVE TO FIVE

ONE MINUTE TO SIX

POSTSCRIPT

Contents

About the Author

Отрывок из книги

Title Page

Private Peaceful

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Afterwards we all gather round the grave and Father’s lowered down, and the vicar won’t stop talking. I want Father to hear the birds for the last time before the earth closes in on top of him and he has nothing left but silence. Father loves larks, loves watching them rising, rising so high you can only see their song. I look up hoping for a lark, and there is a blackbird singing from the yew tree. A blackbird will have to do … I hear Mother whispering to Big Joe that Father is not really in his coffin any more, but in heaven up there — she’s pointing up into the sky beyond the church tower — and that he’s happy, happy as the birds.

The earth thuds and thumps down on the coffin behind us as we drift away, leaving him. We walk home together along the deep lanes. Big Joe plucking at the foxgloves and the honeysuckle, filling Mother’s hands with flowers, and none of us has any tears to cry or words to say. Me least of all. For I have inside me a secret so horrible, a secret I can never tell anyone, not even Charlie. Father needn’t have died that morning in Ford’s Cleave Wood. He was trying to save me. If only I had tried to save myself, if I had run, he would not now be lying dead in his coffin. As Mother smooths my hair and Big Joe offers her yet another foxglove, all I can think is that I have caused this.

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