Читать книгу The Classic Morpurgo Collection - Michael Morpurgo, Michael Morpurgo - Страница 34

Everything after that seemed to happen suddenly, and in very quick succession. It was a quiet weekend at the hotel, with fewer guests around. There were no big dressy dinners, no grand balls, no smart parties. All of us who worked there preferred it like this, even if the days could drag a bit. Everyone was more relaxed. I liked the weekends anyway, because Kaspar and I usually saw more of Lizziebeth then. She’d be bored out of her mind downstairs, and would often sneak up to see Kaspar, sometimes three or four times a day, leaving me a note each time. I finished work earlier on a Sunday, so usually she’d be up there in my room with Kaspar, waiting for me when I got back. Sometimes she’d steal away some scones and cake, hiding them away in a napkin – she was always saying I was too thin and needed feeding up – and since I was always more than a little hungry after work, I didn’t argue with her.

We were sitting there one Sunday evening tucking into some delicious fruit cake, when I heard a voice in the corridor outside. Skullface! It was Skullface! She was talking to Mary O’Connell, and she was not in a good mood.

“That idiot boy, Johnny Trott, is he in?”

“I haven’t seen him, Mrs Blaise,” Mary told her. “Honest.”

The footsteps came closer and closer, the bunch of keys rattling louder with every step.

Skullface was ranting now. “Do you know what that he’s gone and done? Well, I’ll tell you, shall I? He’s only used a black brush on Lord Macauley’s best brown boots. There’s black all over them. And who gets the blame? Me. Well. I’ll have his guts for garters, I will. Where is he?”

“I don’t know, Mrs Blaise, honest to God I don’t.” Mary was doing her best for me.

The footsteps were right outside my door now, and there I was with Lizziebeth in my room, and Kaspar cleaning himself on her lap. All she had to do was to open the door and I’d get the sack for sure. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I was praying that somehow, anyhow, Mary would prevent her from opening that door. It was this very moment that Kaspar chose to stop washing his paws and spring out of Lizziebeth’s lap, yowling in his fury. It wasn’t his gentle miaow, this was his wailing war cry, and it was shrill and loud, horribly loud. For a moment or two there was silence outside the door. Then, “A cat! As I live and breathe, a cat!” cried Skullface. “Johnny Trott’s got a cat in his room! How dare he? How dare he? It’s against the rules, my rules!”

I looked aghast at Lizziebeth. Without a moment’s hesitation she picked up Kaspar, and dumped him unceremoniously in my arms. “In the wardrobe,” she whispered. “Get in the wardrobe. Quick!”

Once in there I crouched down, stroking Kaspar frantically to calm him down, to stop him from yowling again. Then I heard something I simply couldn’t believe. Kaspar was yowling again, from outside the wardrobe, from my room. Yet he couldn’t be, because he was with me, inside the wardrobe, in my arms and he definitely wasn’t yowling. Yet he was yowling – I could hear him! In my panic and confusion it took several moments before I realised what was going on: Lizziebeth was out there in my room and mimicking Kaspar pitch perfectly.

Mary told me afterwards – she told everyone afterwards – exactly what had happened. Apparently Lizziebeth opened the door to Skullface yowling and wailing at her just like Kaspar. Skullface just stood there, gaping at Lizziebeth. She could not believe her eyes. It was a while before she could speak at all. Her mouth opened and shut like a goldfish, Mary said. Then Skullface gathered herself a little. “What on earth, young lady…” she said at last. “What on earth do you think you are doing up here in the servants’ quarters, young lady? It’s strictly out of bounds.”

Lizziebeth yowled back at her. “I’m a cat,” she said quite calmly, in between yowls. “I was chasing a mouse, and he ran in here. So I ran in after him and I caught him. I’m very good at catching mice, you know. I gobbled him up, just like that. One gulp. I’ve got to tell you, he tasted just wonderful. Best mouse I ever ate. Byeee!” With that, she yowled at the astonished Skullface, and skipped off down the corridor, still yowling as she went, past Skullface, past Mary and the others, all of whom by now had come out into the corridor to see what all the fuss was about.

Skullface, it seems, then stuck her head round my door, took one quick look into the room, slammed the door furiously behind her, and stormed off down the corridor, fulminating as she went. “Children, wretched children!” she fumed. “If I had my way they wouldn’t be allowed in the Savoy at all. Nothing but a nuisance, a perfect nuisance. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a spoilt child. And an American spoilt child is the worst of all, the work of the devil himself! Running wild like that all over my hotel. How dare she?” She stopped and turned round, wagging her finger at everyone. “And you tell that Johnny Trott when you see him that he will apologise to Lord Macauley, and polish his boots again. This time I want them nutty brown and shining, not a trace of black, and he’s to come and show them to me before he returns them to his lordship. At once, at once. You tell him.”

How we laughed in the corridor when she’d gone. We were doubled up and aching with it. Lizziebeth, who was already a great favourite with everyone up there, had now become a matchless heroine to us all. Her quick thinking, her brazenness and her fearlessness had saved the day, probably saved my job too, and most certainly saved Kaspar from being taken away.

But it was only the next day that this same fearlessness very nearly cost her her life, and mine too, come to that. It was from Kaspar that I first learned something was wrong. He was always happy to see me when I came upstairs after work. He’d be lying there on the bed, his legs in the air, his tail swishing, willing me to tickle his tummy. I came back to my room to see him at about eleven o’clock, my usual time, my first work-break of the morning. I was hoping Lizziebeth might be there with him. But this morning she wasn’t. And neither was Kaspar lying on my bed. Instead he was pacing the room and yowling. He was in a very agitated state, leaping up and down and off the windowsill. I’d seen him do this before if there was a pigeon strutting up and cooing at him from the parapet outside the window. But there was no pigeon. I tried feeding Kaspar – I thought it might calm him down – but he wasn’t interested. Clearly nothing mattered to him except whatever was going on outside that window. So I climbed up, and opened the window wide enough for me to crane my neck, so I could see all the way along the narrow gully in both directions. No pigeons there either.

That was when I spotted Lizziebeth. I could see at once what she was trying to do. She was on her hands and knees and climbing out of the gully up on to the roof tiles. Ahead of her was a pigeon, hopping ever upwards on one leg towards the ridge of the roof. Its other leg hung useless. Lizziebeth was following it, cooing as she climbed, stopping from time to time to throw it some crumbs, trying all she could to entice it down. She seemed quite unaware of the danger she was in.

My first instinct was to shout to her, to warn her, but something told me that to alarm her at that moment was the worst thing I could do. Instead, I climbed out of the window, closing it behind me so that Kaspar couldn’t follow me, and crept along the gully trying not to look down over the parapet and down into the street, eight storeys below. Lizziebeth had almost reached the ridge above me, but by now the pigeon was hopping away from her along the ridge towards the chimney stack. I climbed up after her. Only when I was right below her did I venture to call out to her, and then only as softly as I could.

“Lizziebeth,” I said. “It’s me. It’s Johnny. I’m right below you. You mustn’t go any higher. You mustn’t.”

She didn’t look down at first. She just kept climbing.

“It’s the pigeon,” she told me. “He’s awful hurt. Looks like he’s broke his leg or something.”

That was the moment she looked down. Only then did she realise just how high she was. All her fearlessness left her in an instant. She slipped at once and clung there, frozen with terror. The ridge was only a short distance above her, but I could see that she wasn’t going to be able to get up there on her own, not now, and that there was no possible way she could come down either.

“Stay right where you are, Lizziebeth,” I told her. “Don’t move, I’m coming up.”

All I could think of was that somehow I had to get her up on to that ridge. We’d just sit there until we were seen and rescue came. But between me and her was a steep, tiled roof, acres of tiles, it seemed, and with no foothold, nothing to hold on to. One slip, one loose tile, and I’d be slipping and sliding back down the roof and probably over the parapet. It didn’t bear thinking about. So I tried not to. That was why I talked to her all the way up as I climbed. I wasn’t only trying to calm her fears, I was desperately trying to calm my own.

“Just hang on, Lizziebeth. Look up at the pigeon. Whatever you do, don’t look down. I’m coming. I’ll be right there. Promise.”

I climbed as fast as my shaking legs would allow. I went sideways across the tiles like a crab, zigzagging up the roof. It was longer, but it made it easier, safer, less steep. I just fixed my mind on reaching that ridge, and climbed. More than once I dislodged a tile and sent it crashing down into the gulley below. Then at last I was up there and sitting astride the ridge. Now I was able to reach down, grasp Lizziebeth by the wrist and haul her up. We sat there facing one another, safe for the moment, but both of us breathless with fear. The pigeon was quite oblivious to all that had been done to help him. He hopped one-legged back down the roof, along the gully, and then up on to the parapet, pecking away at the crumbs as he went. He flew off quite happily.

Someone must have been watching all this drama unfold, because the Fire Brigade came soon enough. There were bells clanging in the street below, and firemen in shiny helmets began to appear all along the gully below, one of them talking to us all the while, telling us again and again not to move. The truth is that neither of us could have moved even if we’d wanted to. They ran ladders up to us and lifted us down, Lizziebeth first. When at last I was carried in through the big window at the end of our corridor, I saw it was crowded with people. The hotel manager was there, Skullface, Mary, Luke, Mr Freddie, everyone. As I walked by they all began to clap me on the back. It was only then that I really understood what I’d done. The manager pumped my hand, and told me I was a proper little hero. But Skullface wasn’t clapping. She wasn’t smiling either. She knew something wasn’t quite as it should be, but I could tell she didn’t know what it was. I smiled at her though, defiantly, triumphantly. I think I enjoyed that moment more than all the backslapping and handshaking. Although that was fun too.

They laid on a celebratory supper for me down in the kitchens that night, and sat me at the head of the table. They sang For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow over and over again. We had quite a night of it. After a while the manager came to fetch me away. He was taking me up to the Stantons’ rooms, he told me, because the family wanted to thank me personally. When I was ushered in, I found the three of them lined up in the sitting room to greet me, Lizziebeth in her dressing gown. It was all very formal and proper. I stood before them, trying all I could not to catch Lizziebeth’s eye. I knew that just one look between us could give everything away.

“Young man,” Mr Stanton began. “Mrs Stanton and I, but most of all Elizabeth of course, owe you a very great debt of gratitude.”

Suddenly I saw, and I could not have been more surprised, that there were tears in his eyes, and his voice broke. I had never imagined that men such as this could ever cry.

“Elizabeth is our only child,” he went on, his voice charged with emotion. “She is very precious to us, and today you saved her life. We shall not forget this.”

He stepped forward, shook my hand, and presented me with a large white envelope. “No money could ever be enough of course, young man, but this is just a token of our deep appreciation for what you did, for your extraordinary courage.”

I took the envelope from him, and opened it. In it were five ten pound notes. I had never in my life seen so much money. Before I could say thank you, or indeed say anything at all, Lizziebeth was standing there in front of me, holding out a large piece of paper. I was looking down at a picture of Kaspar.

“I drew it for you,” she said. She was speaking to me as if we hardly knew one another. She was an amazing actress. “I like drawing pictures. It’s a cat. I hope you like it. I did it for you because I especially like black cats. And on the other side, you can see…” She turned the paper over for me. “On the other side I’ve done a picture of the ship we’re sailing home on next week. It’s got four big funnels, and Papa says it’s the biggest, fastest ship in the whole wide world. It’s true, isn’t it, Papa?”

“She’s called the Titanic,” Mrs Stanton added. “It’ll be her maiden voyage, you know. Isn’t she the most magnificent ship you ever saw?”