Michael Morpurgo: War Child to War Horse

For obvious reasons you knew and loved Shakespeare. And, as I was later to discover, you were good at it on the stage too. You were Ophelia in Hamlet, Cordelia in King Lear, Rosalind in As You Like It: the reviews I read were all glowing. I found them after your death in among your papers in your desk, in an envelope marked ‘good reviews, bad ones burnt’. Anyway, the trouble was that Piet loved one particular Shakespearean ditty of yours more than all the others, and at bedtime he’d ask for it over and over again. I dreaded it every time. I knew a terrifying transformation was about to occur. You’d simply become the three witches, sitting there around the fire over your steaming cauldron, chanting your hideous witchy spell. You thought, and Piet thought – or maybe he didn’t, I’m still not sure – but certainly you thought that I was just messing about, playing at being scared as I put my hands over my ears and buried my head in the pillow. You would put on your tremulous witchy voice and that shrill cackle, and if I ever dared look up, I’d see your contorted witchy face, your fingers suddenly turned to claws, and I knew what was coming. Your screeching words would force themselves between my fingers into my ears and there was nothing I could do to keep them out. The moment I heard those first words of the witches’ spell my soul was on fire with fear:

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble …

I could tell that Piet was frightened too. He seemed to be enjoying his fear, revelling in it. But then he was brave. He’d even join in the chorus sometimes and I’d be screaming into my pillow by now to blot out the spell, over-acting like crazy, hamming it up, anything to disguise the real terror I was feeling.

Whenever you recited that horrible ditty I could never sleep afterwards, not for hours. The darkness around me was as dark as death, and full of watching witches, their eyes glaring at me, blood-red and menacing. I’d close my eyes to shut them out, but there was no shutting them out. Whether I was awake or asleep, they’d be there, haunting me, turning my dreams to nightmares. I’d wake up sweating, checking my nose had not been turned into a beak, feeling my hands and feet just in case they’d become webbed overnight.

I asked you about witches one day in the garden, do you remember? I was sitting on my bicycle and you were hanging out the washing on the line. I asked you whether they were really true. I tried to sound unconcerned, as nonchalant as I could. I tried to make out I was just inquisitive. I was longing, of course, for you to tell me the answer I wanted to hear, which was that all witches and their potions and spells were just in stories and poems and pictures, nothing but gobbledegook. But you didn’t say that, did you? Instead you put on your witchy voice again and your witchy look and your witchy claws and chased me round the garden in and out of the sheets and pillowcases and pyjamas hanging from the line, and I cycled off screaming, and you practically split your sides you thought it was so funny.

But then I crashed my bicycle into the edge of the sandpit and was catapulted into the air. I had a soft enough landing in the sand, but I was shaken up, and now crying hysterically – the shock, I suppose – quite unable to pretend any longer. My heart was pounding with fear. You must have seen that the terror in my eyes was real, that I wasn’t playing games any more. You caught me up then and hugged me to you, and that was the best thing you could have done. You hugged the fear out of me. We laughed and sobbed it away together.

You didn’t do the ‘Bubble, bubble’ witchy ditty after that. But Piet did sometimes when he wanted to tease me. With him I knew it was always in fun, but it still frightened me even so. It gave me the shivers every time he did it, but the truth was that in time I found I was enjoying the shivers, just a little bit.

Although I wasn’t ever comfortable with folk tales if there was a witch involved, with spells and curses and the like, I half-wanted to hear them, and later I read them myself. Maybe ‘Hansel and Gretel’ was the turning-point? Through that story I found out how to deal with witches. Just as Gretel had done, I’d creep up behind them and push them in the oven and that would be that. Once I thought I could handle a witch, I could really enjoy the tingle of terror in witchy stories. I became fascinated by them, and by spells and curses in general. Why else would I have done what I did in the bomb site in that spring of 1948 when you were away in America?

So now, all these decades later, it is my turn to tell you a witchy story. It’s a story I should have told you, or rather confessed to you, a long time ago. But I could never bring myself to do it, until you were gone, until now.

Only three people in the world know this story, the three witches of Philbeach Gardens. I’ve never told anyone else because it’s a story I’ve been ashamed of ever since it happened, some sixty-odd years ago. It still upsets me when I think of what I did, what we all did, and what happened afterwards. I still can’t understand it or explain it. Maybe you can? I mean you’ve been alive and you’ve been dead, so you’ve been on both sides of the divide, haven’t you? You’d know about these things. Anyway, here’s our story, how it happened.

You remember when we all lived in London at number 84 Philbeach Gardens? And you remember the bomb site right next door to our house? I’d have been about six maybe, in my first year of proper school, at St Matthias on Warwick Road. It was an ordinary enough London County Council school, but strangely there was a chapel attached to it that we shared with Greek Orthodox priests who drifted around the place, black-bearded phantoms to us, so we kept well clear of them. Apples were the best thing about school. They were sent over from Canada for us because, just after the war, fruit was scarce. We were still on rations, weren’t we?

Usually Piet would walk me to school, but if there was one of those pea-souper smogs, you’d take us and come and fetch us – for safety’s sake, I suppose. I loved that, to see you waiting for us outside the school gates in the fog. But then, when we got home, you’d go and spoil it; you’d make us drink hot Bovril for tea to warm us up. You can’t imagine how much I hated Bovril.

But Bovril aside, that was always the best time of the day, after school. What you won’t remember, what you don’t know, is what Piet and I and Belinda got up to down in the basement, when you weren’t there. You remember Belinda from across the road? The three musketeers, you always called us. But we weren’t the three musketeers at all, not for long anyway, not after what we found down in the basement that day.

You didn’t like us to go down to the basement on our own because the wooden steps were too steep and they were rotten as well in places. That’s why you kept the door locked. There was all sorts of stuff down there, anything you didn’t want in the house or there wasn’t room for. You kept suitcases there, among other things. We knew they were down there because we’d helped fetch them up with you before we went off on holiday to Bournemouth, the first holiday I ever went on, the first time I saw the sea.

We noticed then where you kept the key, up on the ledge above the door. I couldn’t reach it, even standing on a chair, but Piet could. So that’s how we got in there without you or anyone knowing. We just waited until the coast was clear, got the key, and down we went. The place was stuffed full of trunks and tea chests, iron bedsteads and mattresses, boxes of old clothes – wonderful for dressing up – and papers and broken picture frames. It was a real Aladdin’s cave, full of treasures waiting to be discovered. But it was musty and dusty down there and full of cobwebs, and more than once when I came down the steps I saw rats scuttling away into dark corners. At least the light worked – only dimly. But it did mean that it wasn’t as scary as it might otherwise have been.

There was a small fireplace in the basement: at one time someone had used it, because the whole place reeked of soot and smoke. There was a heap of ashes in the grate, and the feathery skeleton of a jackdaw or a crow lying on top, wings outstretched – it must have fallen down the chimney. There was a Belfast sink in the corner with a tap, always dripping away the seconds.

One trunk in particular fascinated us because it was covered in labels, and on every one of them a picture of a ship – one was called the Mauretania, another the Queen Elizabeth. Who knew what treasures it contained? But what excited us most about the trunk was that it was locked. We had to imagine what was in there, and our imaginings led us naturally to pirates – treasure chests and pirates go together, don’t they. So that was partly, I suppose, why I came to think of that dark and dingy basement as a pirate’s lair. The iron hooks hanging from the ceiling only served to confirm it. When we first saw the hooks, Piet and I knew at once that this place had to be Captain Hook’s treasure cave. This was where Captain Hook from Peter Pan kept all his treasure and his spare hooks for his arm, in case he lost one in a fight, we thought.

Once we’d found that key, Piet and Belinda and I would be down in the basement whenever we could, mostly after school, mostly when you went away or whenever you were out and left us with Aunty B and Aunty J, our live-in babysitters. We got up to all sorts of tricks with them, which was wicked of us, I know that now. We only got away with it because they adored us. The best trick of all was to disappear down to the basement and then come up again after hiding away for a while to find them all of a fluster and running around the house like headless chickens looking for us. Poor Aunty B. Poor Aunty J. But I have to say it was fun, being so horrible.

In spite of the hours we spent down there, we didn’t come across the witches’ cauldron for some time. It was hardly surprising – there was just so much fascinating stuff to sift through and explore. The tea chests were stuffed with old photos and papers and newspaper cuttings, which Belinda would read out to us because she was the best reader. We found an entire treasure trove of family heirlooms, each one wrapped up in newspaper – pewter cups, china plates and ornaments, vases. But as soon as we found the witches’ cauldron, nothing else mattered to us.

Piet discovered it under a pile of coal sacks in a dark, dank corner. It was heavy, black and pot-bellied, with handles, and stood on three clawed feet.

‘Look,’ Piet whispered – we always talked in whispers down in the basement. ‘It’s a witches’ cauldron. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.’

‘We could do spells and things,’ Belinda said.

I was up those stairs like a bat out of hell. It was at least a week before they could persuade me to go down to that basement again, and then it was only because of Belinda, because I didn’t want to look like a scaredy-cat in front of her.

You used to tease me about Belinda, Mum. Only gently, but it made me blush and get cross. You were right, though: I did love her. She used to sit next to me in class and she was very clever. She’d always be first with her hand up and would finish her letter-copying before anyone else. She often used to get ten out of ten for her spelling, and could read aloud almost as fluently as our teacher, Miss Cruickshank. What’s more, Belinda could add up and take away in her head, without using her fingers. She was a genius. She could hopscotch better than anyone in the whole school, and stand on her head for over five minutes. Plus, she was pretty. She had red hair and her eyes were green as beech leaves in spring. She was also Piet’s girlfriend, but we were young enough for none of that to matter.

I’d never have dared to do it if Belinda hadn’t suggested it. We were on our way back from school one afternoon. She and Piet were walking ahead of me, whispering to one another. I caught up with them.

‘What?’ I said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘You don’t want to know,’ Piet replied. ‘It’s about witches.’

‘I’m not scared,’ I told him.

So he went on, ‘I was telling Belinda about the three witches and the “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble” spell and she said why didn’t we do it together, y’know, with the cauldron? We could make a fire, put in the frogs and newts and stuff, say the spell. We could be the three witches. I said you wouldn’t want to do it.’

‘I would,’ I insisted.

‘See?’ Belinda said. ‘I told you he’d do it, Piet. I’ll make the hats. We’ve got to have witches’ hats or the spell won’t work.’

That was it. There was no way I could get out of it now.

It all happened while you were away. I think it was one of those times you went off to America with him, with our stepfather. I remember the postcards you sent us of the Empire State Building and one of the Statue of Liberty. I’ve still got them somewhere hidden away, in some trunk in our attic, I suppose. We didn’t ever like you going off with him. But when you went away, there was always one major compensation. Aunty B and Aunty J would look after us, which meant of course that we could do pretty much as we liked.

Belinda set it all up, made the hats as she said she would, told us what to do and how to do it. She said it was the boys’ job to make the fire, that girls didn’t do that sort of thing. She sat on the locked trunk with the ship pictures all over it, kicking her heels, and watched as Piet and I did our best to get the fire to light. We got through half a box of pink-tipped Swan Vestas and still nothing would burn. Everything we tried was too damp – old newspapers, magazines, sacks, socks even. We tried blowing and fanning. Nothing worked. Belinda kept telling us we had to keep at it and it would light. ‘Easy as pie,’ she said. ‘You’ve just got to blow harder.’

Then she patted the trunk. ‘What’s in this anyway?’ she asked, her legs swinging, her heels drumming on the trunk.

‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘It’s locked.’

At that moment the lock flew open.

‘It’s not,’ she said, and she got off the trunk and lifted the lid. We all peered in. There were letters and photos, hundreds of them. She picked one out.

‘Who wrote this?’

It was your handwriting, Mum. And when Belinda started reading, it sounded just like your voice talking.

After just a few moments, Belinda stopped reading aloud and began reading the letter to herself.

‘Golly gosh,’ she whispered.

‘What?’ I asked. ‘What does it say?’

‘It’s all about love,’ she said. ‘Listen.’

Darling J,

I love you, you know I do. But I just don’t know if I can go ahead with it. Don’t think badly of me. I know I am weak. I know I need your strength around me. I love you, darling. Always.

Kate

She handed me the letter.

‘That’s our mum,’ I told her. ‘Sometimes she’s Kate, sometimes Kippe, sometimes Catherine. But that’s how she writes, that’s her handwriting.’