Читать книгу The Classic Morpurgo Collection - Michael Morpurgo, Michael Morpurgo - Страница 23

Adonis Blues

The next afternoon after games were over, I went over the fence at the bottom of the park, hared up through Innocents Breach, across the road, along the wall and slipped through the iron gateway with the stone lion roaring above me. It was raining a light summer rain.

I tried knocking at the front door. No one came. No dog barked. I went round to the back and peered in through the kitchen window. The box kite was still there on the kitchen table, but there was no sign of the old lady anywhere. I rattled the kitchen door, and knocked louder, again and again. I called out: “Hello! Hello!” There was no reply. I banged on the window. “Are you there? Are you there?”

“We all are,” came a voice from behind me. I turned. There was no one there. I was alone, alone with the white lion on the hillside. I had imagined it.

I climbed the hill and went to sit in the grass above the white of the lion’s mane. I looked down at the great house beneath me. Jackdaws cawed overhead. There was bracken and grass growing out of the gutters and around the chimney pots. Some of the windows were boarded up. Drainpipes hung loose and rusting. The place was empty, quite empty.

The rain suddenly stopped and the sun warmed the back of my neck. The first butterfly landed on my arm. It was blue. “Adonis Blues, Adonis Blues,” came the voice again, like an echo in my head. Then the sky around me was filled with butterflies, and they were settling to drink on the chalk.

“Adonis Blues, remember?” The same voice, a real voice, her voice. And this time I knew it was not in my head. “Keep him white for us, there’s a dear. We don’t want him forgotten, you see. And think of us sometimes, won’t you?”

“I will,” I cried. “I will.”

And I swear I felt the earth tremble beneath me with the roar of a distant lion.