The Classic Morpurgo Collection (six novels), Page 2

  Bertie was downstairs in a flash, leaping off the veranda and racing barefoot across the compound, shouting at the top of his voice. He threw open the gate and charged down the hill towards the waterhole, yelling and screaming and waving his arms like a wild thing. Startled at this sudden intrusion, the hyenas turned tail and ran, but not far. Once within range Bertie hurled a broadside of pebbles at them, and they ran off again, but again not far. Then he was at the waterhole and between the lion cub and the hyenas, shouting at them to go away. They didn’t. They stood and watched, uncertain for a while. Then they began to circle again, closer, closer…

  That was when the shot rang out. The hyenas bolted into the long grass, and were gone. When Bertie turned round he saw his mother in her nightgown, rifle in hand, running towards him down the hill. He had never seen her run before. Between them they gathered up the mud-matted cub and brought him home. He was too weak to struggle, though he tried. As soon as they had given him some warm milk, they dunked him in the bath to wash him. As the first of the mud came off, Bertie saw he was white underneath.

  “You see!” he cried triumphantly. “He is white! He is. I told you, didn’t I? He’s my white lion!” His mother still could not bring herself to believe it. Five baths later, she had to.

  They sat him down by the stove in a washing basket and fed him again, all the milk he could drink, and he drank the lot. Then he lay down and slept.

  He was still asleep when Bertie’s father got back at lunch time. They told him how it had all happened.

  “Please, Father. I want to keep him,” Bertie said.

  “And so do I,” said his mother. “We both do.” And she spoke as Bertie had never heard her speak before, her voice strong, determined.

  Bertie’s father didn’t seem to know quite how to reply. He just said: “We’ll talk about it later,” and then he walked out.

  They did talk about it later when Bertie was supposed to be in bed. He wasn’t, though. He heard them arguing. He was outside the sitting-room door, watching, listening. His father was pacing up and down.

  “He’ll grow up, you know,” he was saying. “You can’t keep a grown lion, you know that.”

  “And you know we can’t just throw him to the hyenas,” replied his mother. “He needs us, and maybe we need him. He’ll be someone for Bertie to play with for a while.” And then she added sadly: “After all, it’s not as if he’s going to have any brothers and sisters, is it?”

  At this, Bertie’s father went over to her and kissed her gently on the forehead. It was the only time Bertie had ever seen him kiss her.

  “All right then,” he said. “All right. You can keep your lion.”

  So the white lion cub came to live amongst them in the farmhouse. He slept at the end of Bertie’s bed. Wherever Bertie went, the lion cub went too – even to the bathroom, where he would watch Bertie have his bath and lick his legs dry afterwards. They were never apart. It was Bertie who saw to the feeding – milk four times a day from one of his father’s beer bottles – until later on when the lion cub lapped from a soup bowl. There was impala meat whenever he wanted it, and as he grew – and he grew fast – he wanted more and more of it.

  For the first time in his life Bertie was totally happy. The lion cub was all the brothers and sisters he could ever want, all the friends he could ever need. The two of them would sit side by side on the sofa out on the veranda and watch the great red sun go down over Africa, and Bertie would read him Peter and the Wolf, and at the end he would always promise him that he would never let him go off to a zoo and live behind bars like the wolf in the story And the lion cub would look up at Bertie with his trusting amber eyes.

  “Why don’t you give him a name?” his mother asked one day.

  “Because he doesn’t need one,” replied Bertie. “He’s a lion, not a person. Lions don’t need names.”

  Bertie’s mother was always wonderfully patient with the lion, no matter how much mess he made, how many cushions he pounced on and ripped apart, no matter how much crockery he smashed. None of it seemed to upset her. And strangely, she was hardly ever ill these days. There was a spring to her step, and her laughter pealed around the house. His father was less happy about it. “Lions,” he’d mutter on, “should not live in houses. You should keep him outside in the compound.” But they never did. For both mother and son, the lion had brought new life to their days, life and laughter.

  Running Free

  It was the best year of Bertie’s young life. But when it ended, it ended more painfully than he could ever have imagined. He’d always known that one day when he was older he would have to go away to school, but he had thought and hoped it would not be for a long time yet. He’d simply put it out of his mind.

  His father had just returned home from Johannesburg after his yearly business trip. He broke the news at supper that first evening. Bertie knew there was something in the wind. His mother had been sad again in recent days, not sick, just strangely sad. She wouldn’t look him in the eye and she winced whenever she tried to smile at him. The lion had just lain down beside him, his head warm on Bertie’s feet, when his father cleared his throat and began. It was going to be a lecture. Bertie had had them before often enough, about manners, about being truthful, about the dangers of leaving the compound.

  “You’ll soon be eight, Bertie,” he said. “And your mother and I have been doing some thinking. A boy needs a proper education, a good school. Well, we’ve found just the right place for you, a school near Salisbury in England. Your Uncle George and Aunt Melanie live nearby and have promised to look after you in the holidays, and to visit you from time to time. They’ll be father and mother to you for a while. You’ll get on with them well enough, I’m sure you will. They are fine, good people. So you’ll be off on the ship to England in July. Your mother will accompany you. She will spend the summer with you in Salisbury and after she has taken you to your school in September, she’ll then return here to the farm. It’s all arranged.”

  As his heart filled with a terrible dread, all Bertie could think of was his white lion. “But the lion,” he cried, “what about the lion?”

  “I’m afraid there’s something else I have to tell you,” his father said. Looking across at Bertie’s mother, he took a deep breath. And then he told him. He told him he had met a man whilst he was in Johannesburg, a Frenchman, a circus owner from France. He was over in Africa looking for lions and elephants to buy for his circus. He liked them young, very young, a year or less, so that he could train them up without too much trouble. Besides, they were easier and cheaper to transport when they were young. He would be coming out to the farm in a few days’ time to see the white lion for himself. If he liked what he saw, he would pay good money and take him away

  It was the only time in his life Bertie had ever shouted at his father. “No! No, you can’t!”

  It was rage that wrung the hot tears from him, but they soon gave way to silent tears of sadness and loss. There was no comforting him, but his mother tried all the same.

  “We can’t keep him here for ever, Bertie,” she said. “We always knew that, didn’t we? And you’ve seen how he stands by the fence gazing out into the veld. You’ve seen him pacing up and down. But we can’t just let him out. He’d be all on his own, no mother to protect him. He couldn’t cope. He’d be dead in weeks. You know he would.”

  “But you can’t send him to a circus! You can’t!” said Bertie. “He’ll be shut up behind bars. I promised him he never would be. And they’ll point at him. They’ll laugh at him. He’d rather die. Any animal would.” But he knew as he looked across the table at them that it was hopeless, that their minds were quite made up.

  For Bertie the betrayal was total. That night he made up his mind what had to be done. He waited until he heard his father’s deep breathing next door. Then, with his white lion at his heels, he crept downstairs in his pyjamas, took down his father’s rifle from the rack and stepped out into the night. The compound gate yawned op
en noisily when he pushed it, but then they were out, out and running free. Bertie had no thought of the dangers around him, only that he must get as far from home as he could before he did it.

  The lion padded along beside him, stopping every now and again to sniff the air. A clump of trees became a herd of elephants wandering towards them out of the dawn. Bertie ran for it. He knew how elephants hated lions. He ran and ran till his legs could run no more. As the sun came up over the veld he climbed to the top of a kopje and sat down, his arm round the lion’s neck. The time had come.

  “Be wild now,” he whispered. “You’ve got to be wild. Don’t come home. Don’t ever come home. They’ll put you behind bars. You hear what I’m saying? All my life I’ll think of you, I promise I will. I won’t ever forget you.” And he buried his head in the lion’s neck and heard the greeting groan from deep inside him. He stood up. “I’m going now,” he said. “Don’t follow me. Please don’t follow me.” And Bertie clambered down off the kopje and walked away.

  When he looked back, the lion was still sitting there watching him; but then he stood up, yawned, stretched, licked his lips and sprang down after him. Bertie shouted at him, but he kept coming. He threw sticks. He threw stones. Nothing worked. The lion would stop, but then as soon as Bertie walked on, he simply followed at a safe distance.

  “Go back!” Bertie yelled, “you stupid, stupid lion! I hate you! I hate you! Go back!” But the lion kept loping after him whatever he did, whatever he said.

  There was only one thing for it. He didn’t want to do it, but he had to. With tears filling his eyes and his mouth, he lifted the rifle to his shoulder and fired over the lion’s head. At once the lion turned tail and scampered away through the veld. Bertie fired again. He watched till he could see him no more, and then turned for home. He knew he’d have to face what was coming to him. Maybe his father would strap him – he’d threatened it often enough – but Bertie didn’t mind. His lion would have his chance for freedom, maybe not much of one. Anything was better than the bars and whips of a circus.

  The Frenchman

  They were there waiting on the veranda, his mother in her nightgown, his father in his hat, his horse saddled, ready to come after him. “I’ve set him free,” Bertie cried. “I’ve set him free, so he won’t ever have to live behind bars.” He was sent to his room at once, where he threw himself on his bed and buried his face in his pillow.

  Day after day his father went out looking for the white lion, but each evening he came back empty-handed and blazing with fury.

  “What’ll I tell the Frenchman when he comes, eh? Did you for one minute think of that, Bertie? Did you? I should strap you. Any father worth his salt would strap you.” But he didn’t.

  Bertie spent all day and every day at the fence, or up his tree in the compound, or at his bedroom window, his eyes scanning the veld for anything white moving through the grass. He prayed at his bedside every night until his knees were numb, prayed that his white lion would learn how to kill, would somehow find enough to eat, would avoid the hyenas, and other lions too, come to that. Above all, he prayed he would not come back, at least not until the Frenchman from the circus had come and gone.

  The day the Frenchman came, it rained, the first rain for months, it seemed. Bertie watched him as he stood there, dripping on the veranda, his thumb hooked into his waistcoat pocket, as Bertie’s father broke the news that there was no white lion to collect, that he had escaped. That was the moment when Bertie’s mother put her hand to her throat, cried out and pointed. The white lion was wandering through the open compound gate, yowling pitifully. Bertie ran to him and fell on his knees and held him. The lion was soaked to the skin and trembling. He was panting with hunger and so thin that you could see his rib cage. They all helped to rub him down, and then looked on as he ate ravenously.

  “Incroyable! Magnifique!” said the Frenchman. “And white, just as you said, white like the snow, and tame too. He will be the star of my circus. I shall call him ‘Le Prince Blanc’, ‘The White Prince’. He will have all he needs, all he wants, fresh meat every day, fresh straw every night. I love my animals, you know. They are my family, and this lion of yours, he will be my favourite son. Have no fear, young man, I promise you that he will never be hungry again.” He put his hand on his heart. “As God is my witness, I promise it.”

  Bertie looked up into the Frenchman’s face. It was a kind face, not smiling, yet earnest and trustworthy. But even so, it did not make Bertie feel any better.

  “There, you see,” said Bertie’s mother. “He’ll be happy, and that’s all that matters, Bertie, isn’t it?”

  Bertie knew that there was no point in begging. He knew now that the lion could never survive on his own in the wild, that he would have to go with the Frenchman. There was nothing else for it.

  That night as they lay in the dark together side by side, Bertie made him a last promise. “I will find you,” he whispered. “Always remember that I will find you. I promise I will.”

  The next morning the Frenchman shook hands with Bertie on the veranda and said goodbye. “He’ll be fine, don’t you worry. And one day you must come to France and see my circus, Le Cirque Merlot. It is the best circus in all of France.” Then they left, the white lion in a wooden crate rocking from side to side in the back of the Frenchman’s wagon. Bertie watched until the wagon disappeared from view.

  A few months later, Bertie found himself on a ship steaming out of Cape Town, bound for England and school and a new life. As the last of Table Mountain vanished in a heat haze, he said goodbye to Africa and was not at all unhappy. He had his mother with him, for the time being at least. And after all, England was nearer France than Africa was, much nearer.

  Strawbridge

  The old lady drank her tea and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I’m always doing that,” she said. “I’m always letting my tea go cold.” The dog scratched his ear, groaning with the pleasure of it, but eyeing me all the time.

  “Is that the end then?” I asked.

  She laughed and put down her cup. “I should say not,” she said. And then she went on, picking a tea leaf off the tip of her tongue. “Up till now it’s been just Bertie’s story. He told it to me so often that I almost feel I was there when it happened. But from now on it’s my story too.”

  “What about the white lion?” I had to know. “Did he find the white lion? Did he keep his promise?”

  The old lady seemed suddenly clouded with sadness. “You must remember,” she said, putting a bony hand on mine, “that true stories do not always end just as we would wish them to. Would you like to hear the truth of what happened, or shall I make something up for you just to keep you happy?”

  “I want to know what really happened,” I replied.

  “Then you shall,” she said. She turned from me and looked out of the window again at the butterfly lion, still blue and shimmering on the hillside.

  Whilst Bertie was growing up on his farm in Africa with his fence all around, I was growing up here at Strawbridge in this echoing cold cavern of a house with its deer park and its high wall all around. And I grew up, for the most part, alone. I too was an only child. My mother had died giving birth to me, and Father was rarely at home. Maybe that was why the two of us, Bertie and I, got on so well from the first moment we met. We had so much in common from the very start.

  Like Bertie, I scarcely ever left the confines of my home, so I had few friends. I didn’t go to school either, not to start with. I had a governess instead, Miss Tulips – everyone called her “Nolips” because she was so thin-lipped and severe. She moved around the house like a cold shadow. She lived on the top floor, like Cook, and like Nanny. Nanny Mason – bless her heart – brought me up and taught me all the do’s and don’ts of life like all good nannies should. But she was more than just a nanny to me, she was a mother to me, and a wonderful one too, the best I could have had, the best anyone could have had.

  My mornings were always spent at my studies with N
olips, but all the while I was looking forward to my afternoons out walking with Nanny Mason – except on Sundays, when I was allowed to be on my own all day, if Father wasn’t home for the weekend, which he usually wasn’t. Then I could fly my kites when it was fine, and read my books when it wasn’t. I loved my books –Black Beauty, Little Women, Heidi – I loved them all, because they took me outside the park walls, they took me all over the world. I met the best friends I ever had in those books – until I met Bertie, that is.

  I remember it was just after my tenth birthday. It was Sunday and I was out flying my kites. But there wasn’t much wind, and no matter how hard I ran, I just couldn’t get even my best box kite to catch the wind and fly. I climbed all the way up Wood Hill, looking for wind. And there at the top I found it at last, enough to send my kite soaring. But then the wind gusted and my kite swirled away crazily towards the trees. I couldn’t haul it in in time. It caught on a branch and stuck fast in a high elm tree in amongst the rookery. The rooks flew out cawing in protest whilst I tugged at my line, crying in my fury and frustration. I gave up, sat down and howled. That was when I noticed a boy emerging from the shadow of the trees.

  “I’ll get it down for you,” he said, and began to climb the tree. Easy as you like, he crawled along the branch, reached out and released my kite.

  It floated down and landed at my feet. My best kite was torn and battered, but at least I had it back. Then he was down the tree and standing there in front of me.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” I asked.

  “I can mend it, if you like,” he said.