Читать книгу The Classic Morpurgo Collection - Michael Morpurgo, Michael Morpurgo - Страница 36

I should have taken more notice of Lizziebeth’s drawings, appreciated them more when she gave them to me, and afterwards, but the truth was I’d never in my life seen so much money. Sitting on my bed late that night, I kept counting it to make sure I wasn’t dreaming it. Everyone on the corridor came in. They had to see it with their own eyes. Mary O’Connell held each note up to the light, I remember, to check it wasn’t a forgery. “Well, you never know, do you? Not with these rich folk,” she said. I told Mary something I hadn’t spoken about with the others, how I’d been thinking about it and was beginning to feel very uncomfortable about taking the money. Mary was always good about right and wrong, she understood these things.

“I didn’t do it for the money, Mary.” I told her, “I did it because it was Lizziebeth up there.”

“I know that, Johnny,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it, does it? This money is your ticket out of here. It’s a God-given fortune, so it is. There’s two years wages here. For God’s sakes, you could go anywhere, do anything. Wouldn’t any one of us like to do that! You don’t want to be having to shine shoes for the rest of your life, do you?”

I lay awake most of that night talking it all through with Kaspar – he was a good listener. By morning I felt that despite everything Mary had said, I might have to give the money back. Lizziebeth’s drawings were a thank you, and that was fine; but I couldn’t help thinking that the money was in some way a kind of pay-off; reward money for a bell-boy. No, I didn’t like being treated like a bell-boy, and I didn’t want a reward. I’d give the money back. But then by morning I’d almost changed my mind again. Maybe Mary had been right after all. I’d keep the money. Why shouldn’t I?

I was still lying there propped up on my pillows, with Kaspar curled up at the end of the bed, looking at Lizziebeth’s picture of the great ship with the four funnels steaming through the ocean, gulls flying overhead, when the door suddenly flew open. Skullface stood there. “I thought so. I thought as much!” she said. “First that girl was in here miaowing like a cat, and that was odd enough. Then a day later she was up here again, wasn’t she? But this time up on the roof, just outside your window. Strange that. Strange sort of coincidence, I thought. D’you know something, Johnny Trott, I don’t believe in coincidences. And now you’re quite the little hero, aren’t you? Well, I weren’t born yesterday. I’m no one’s fool, Johnny Trott. I knew something fishy was going on. But now I can see, it weren’t fishy at all, it were catty, more like.”

She came into the room, shutting the door behind her, and stood over me, a nasty vindictive grin on her face. Kaspar had leaped on to the window-sill, and was hissing and wailing at her furiously. “Well now,” she went on. “I hear you’ve come into the money, Johnny Trott, is that right?” I nodded.

“Here’s the deal then,” she went on. “Either you pack your bags, hand in your uniform and you’re out in the streets within the hour, or you hand over the money. It’s that simple. Hand over the money and you can stay. I’ll even let you keep your horrible cat up here, for a while anyway. There, I can’t be more generous than that, can I now?”

A few moments later as she walked out of my room, tucking the envelope into her pocket, I was almost grateful to her. After all she’d made my decision for me. I sat down on my bed where Kaspar soon joined me for some petting and reassurance. I was thinking things through. I was no poorer than I had been before it all happened. And now at least I had her word, for what it was worth, that Kaspar would be safe, for a while anyway. I still had my job. I felt a great sense of relief, but that was very soon overwhelmed by a wave of sadness. All too soon now Lizziebeth would be leaving and sailing back to America. “I’m going to miss her. We’re both going to miss her, Kaspar,” I said aloud. “We won’t miss the money – we never really had it, did we – but we will miss Lizziebeth. What are we going to do without her?”

I shouldn’t have said anything. Kaspar must have understood enough of it or maybe he just picked up on my sadness, I don’t know. But either way, it became clear to me as the days passed that he understood all too well that Lizziebeth would soon be going. After the very public rooftop rescue – it had been in all the papers too – Lizziebeth had the perfect excuse now to come up and see me often, even for us to be seen talking down in the lobby. So at least we were able to spend more and more time together during those final days.

Time and again I was tempted to tell her about how Skullface had blackmailed me and taken her father’s money, but I thought how angry it would make her, that it was too much to expect a young girl of that age to keep quiet about such a thing. So I didn’t tell her anything about that, but I did tell her things I’d never told anyone else: about my life in the orphanage in Islington, about Harry, the cockroach that I’d kept as a pet in a matchbox, about Mr Wellington, who was supposed to look after us, but who must have hated children so much because he’d cane us so often for the slightest thing. He caned me for keeping Harry, then took him away and stamped on him right in front of my eyes, in front of all of us. That was what made me run away in the end – I’d often thought of it before, but never dared. I told her how I’d wandered the streets of London for weeks, living rough, before finding work as a bell-boy at the Savoy. And of course she wanted to know all about Countess Kandinsky. I told her my dream of finding my mother one day. I told her so many of my hopes and dreams. And all the while, she listened wide-eyed.

That last week together, things changed between Lizziebeth and me. From the moment we were sitting up on that roof holding hands, and sharing our fear, she was no longer a little rich girl from America, and I wasn’t a fourteen-year-old orphan from London. We had become proper friends, the best of friends. She no longer gabbled on all the time about herself, or about Kaspar, as she had when I’d first known her. She asked questions, and she wanted answers. “We haven’t got much more time together,” she said one morning, “so you have to tell me everything, because I want to remember everything about you and about Kaspar for ever and ever.”

She’d bring me new drawings every day, of her house in New York, of the Statue of Liberty, of her island home in Maine, of her dressed as a pirate, of her with Kaspar, of me in my uniform, but mostly of Kaspar: Kaspar sleeping, Kaspar sitting, Kaspar hunting. But as the day for her to leave came ever closer, we became more silent together, more sad together. She would hug Kaspar close all the time she was with us in my room, and I could feel her wanting to stretch every minute into an hour, into a week, into a month. I wanted the same.

It was on the last evening that she first suggested the idea. She was cradling Kaspar, rocking him gently, her head buried in his neck, when suddenly she looked up at me, her eyes filled with tears.

“You could come, Johnny. You and Kaspar, you could come with us. We could go on the ship together. You could come and live in New York. You’d love it. I know you would. And in America you wouldn’t have to be a bell-boy. In America you can be whatever you want to be, that’s what Papa says. It’s the land of the free. You could be President of the United States. Anyone could be. Please come, Johnny, please come.” As she was talking I felt a sudden hope surging inside me at the prospect of a new and exciting life across the ocean, in America, but immediately I could see how impossible it was.

“I can’t, Lizziebeth,” I said. “I mean I couldn’t even pay for my passage…”

“What about the money?” she replied. “What about the money my father gave you?”

I told her everything, all about how Skullface had blackmailed me. I hadn’t intended to. It just came pouring out.

Lizziebeth was silent for a while.

“She’s a witch,” she said finally, “and I hate her.” Then she brightened suddenly. “I could ask Papa,” she went on. “He’s got a lot of money. He could pay for your passage.”

“No,” I told her firmly. “I don’t want money from him.”

She looked hurt and crestfallen at this, and I wished at once I hadn’t spoken so directly. “You don’t want to come, do you?” She said.

“I do,” I told her. “I really do. I don’t want to be carrying luggage and polishing shoes all my life, do I? And I’d love to go across to America in that big ship you drew for me – what was it called again?”

“Titanic,” Lizziebeth said, in tears now. “We’re going early in the morning. We’ve got to go by train first, Ma says, before we can get to the ship. You could come with us. You could come and see us off. And you could bring Kaspar.”

“I suppose I could see the ship then, couldn’t I?” I said, but I knew even as I spoke that I was grasping at straws. “It’s no good, Lizziebeth. Skullface wouldn’t let me have a day off work. I know she wouldn’t. I’d really like to see the Titanic too. Is it really the biggest ship in the world?”

“And the fastest,” she said, getting up suddenly and handing me Kaspar. “I’m going to speak to Papa. You saved my life didn’t you? I’m going to ask him, and I’m going to tell him about Skullface too.”

She was out of my room and gone before I could stop her.

The very same day, only a few hours later, Skullface was seen walking grimfaced out of the tradesmen’s entrance with her suitcase, “never to return”, as Mr Freddie told me with a smile all over his face.

But I never saw my money again. The next morning I found myself sitting in a first class train carriage with the Stanton family on the way to Southampton. The manager had told me that he’d had a special request from Mr Stanton that Kaspar and I be allowed to accompany the family to Southampton, and help them with their luggage on board ship. He said that considering recent events, and how I had enhanced the good name of the hotel, he was happy this one time to let me go. But I would be on duty, he reminded me. I had to wear my Savoy uniform, carry all their trunks and bags on board, and see to their every need until the ship sailed.

In among the luggage I carried out of the hotel that day was a picnic basket Mary O’Connell had “borrowed” from the stores. Inside the basket was Kaspar. He yowled all the way down in the lift, wailed all the way across the lobby, past Mr Freddie, who lifted his hat to him in farewell. He only stopped his complaining once we were in the cab, when Lizziebeth took him out and cradled him in her arms. That was when she began telling her mother and father the whole story of our secret, of how we’d met, all about Kaspar and me, and the Countess Kandinsky, and my orphanage, and Harry the cockroach and Mr Wellington, and how I’d run away. One story flowed into the next, my whole life story and Kaspar’s in a torrent of words that tumbled over one another in her excitement to tell the whole thing. She hardly paused for breath until we got to the station.

Kaspar sat on Lizziebeth’s lap all the way down on the train to Southampton. It was for the most part a silent journey, because Lizziebeth slept and so did Kasper.

I shall never forget my first sighting of the Titanic. She seemed to dwarf the entire dockside. As I went up the gangplank carrying the Stantons’ trunks, Lizziebeth in front of me carrying Kaspar in the picnic basket, the band was playing on the quayside, and there were crowds of people everywhere, spectators on shore and passengers all along the railings, high excitement and anticipation on every face. I was agog with it all. Twice or three times I went back and forth to their cabin – deck C, number 52. I’ve never forgotten the number. Their cabin was at least as spacious as their rooms at the Savoy, and just as luxurious. I was bowled over by the palatial splendour of everything I saw, by the sheer enormity of the ship, both inside and out. It was grander and more magnificent than I could ever have imagined.

The time came when I’d carried all their trunks up to their cabin, and I knew the moment for parting had come. Lizziebeth knew it too. Sitting on the sofa, she said her last goodbye to Kaspar, burying her face in his neck and sobbing her heart out. Her father took the cat from her as gently as he could and put him back in the picnic basket. It was as he was doing this that I decided. It had never even occurred to me until that moment.

“Lizziebeth,” I said, “I want you to take him with you to America.”

“You mean it?” she cried. “You really mean it?”

“I mean it,” I told her.

Lizziebeth turned to her mother and father. “I can, can’t I, Ma? Please Papa. Say yes, please.”

Neither objected. On the contrary, they looked delighted.

Each of them shook me by the hand. They were still reserved, but I saw a genuine kindness there, and a warmth in their eyes that I had not seen before. I crouched down and stroked Kaspar in his picnic basket. He looked up at me very intently. He knew what was happening, that we were saying goodbye. Lizziebeth led me to the door of the cabin. She clung to me for so long that I thought she’d never let go. The ship’s siren was sounding. I broke away from her and ran up on to the deck, brushing away my tears.

I’ve thought a lot about this since, about why I gave Kaspar away like that, on the spur of the moment, and about what I did next too. I remember standing there on deck with everyone waving, with the siren blasting and the band playing, and I knew then I couldn’t go back to my old life, to my little attic room at the Savoy, that I should stay with Kaspar and Lizziebeth, and that I just didn’t want to leave the ship, this wonderful ship, this magical floating palace. When the final call went out for any last visitors and porters to leave the ship, I stayed on board. It was that simple. I ran to the rail and began waving with all the other passengers. I was one of them. I was going. I was going to America, to Lizziebeth’s land of the free, where I could be anything I wanted to be. It really wasn’t until I saw the Titanic moving away from the dockside and saw the widening gap of sea in between, that I realised quite what I had done, what a momentous decision I had made, that there was no going back. I was a stowaway on the Titanic.