Читать книгу Favourite Cat Stories: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, Kaspar and The Butterfly Lion - Michael Morpurgo, Michael Morpurgo - Страница 21

At playtime I found Barry sitting on his own on the dustbins behind the bike shed. He was all red around the eyes. He’d been crying, but he was trying not to show it. He wouldn’t tell me why at first, but after a while I got it out of him. It’s because there won’t be room for him any more with Mrs Morwhenna when she moves into Kingsbridge next week. He likes her a lot and now he has nowhere to go. So, to make him feel better, and because of what he had done for me the other day with Skunkhead, I said he could come home with me and play after school, so long as he didn’t pick his nose. He perked up after that, and he was even chirpier when he saw the cows and the sheep. And when he saw Dad’s Fordson tractor he went loopy. It was like he’d been given a new toy of his own to play with. I couldn’t get him off it. Grandfather took him off around the farm, letting him steer the tractor – which wasn’t fair because he’s never let me do that.

By the time they came back they were both of them as happy as larks. I haven’t heard Grandfather laugh so much in ages. Barry tucked into Mum’s cream sponge cake, slice after slice of it, and all the time he never stopped talking about the tractor and the farm (and no one told him not to talk with his mouth full, which wasn’t fair either because Mum’s always ticking me off for that). He’d have scoffed the lot if Mum hadn’t taken it away. He still smiles at me, but I don’t mind so much now. In fact I quite like it really.

Afterwards, when we were walking together down the lane to the farm gate, he seemed suddenly down in the dumps. He hardly said a word all the way. Then suddenly he just blurted it out. “I could come and stay,” he said. “I wouldn’t be a nuisance, honest. I wouldn’t pick my nose, honest.” I couldn’t say no, but I didn’t want to say yes, not exactly. I mean, it would be like having a brother in the house. I’d never had a brother and I wasn’t sure I wanted one, even if Barry was my best friend now, sort of. So I said maybe. I said I’d ask. And I did, at supper time. Grandfather didn’t even have to think about it. “The lad needs a home, doesn’t he?” he said. “We’ve got a home. He needs feeding. We’ve got food. We should have had one of those evacuee children before, but I never liked townies much till now. This one’s all right though. He’s a good lad. Besides, it’ll be good to have a boy about the place. Be like the old days, when your father was a boy. You tell him he can come.”

He never asked me what I thought, never asked Mum. He just said yes. It took me so much by surprise that I wasn’t ready for it, and neither was Mum. So it looks as if I’m going to have a sort of brother living with us, whether I like it or not. Mum came in a minute ago and sat on my bed. “Do you mind about Barry?” she asked me.

“He’s all right, I suppose,” I told her. And he is too, except when he’s picking his nose of course.

“One thing’s for sure, it’ll make Grandfather happier,” Mum said. “And if he’s happier, then maybe it’ll be easier to talk him into leaving, into moving to Uncle George’s place. They’re going to move us out, you know, Lily. One way or another, they’re going to do it.” She gave me a good long cuddle tonight. She hasn’t done that for ages. I think she thinks I’m too old for it or something, but I’m not.

I haven’t had my nightmare about Dad for a long time now, which is good. But I haven’t thought much about him either, which is not so good.