Dear Olly

Dear Olly
Michael Morpurgo

Discover the beautiful stories of Michael Morpurgo, author of Warhorse and the nation’s favourite storytellerA moving story of a brother, a sister and a swallow, and how all are in some way victims of the horrors of landmines.Olly’s brother Matt wants to go and work with children who have been made orphans, through war, in Africa. He wants to be a clown and make them laugh. His mother and sister want him to stay in England and go to university.Hero, a swallow, has a journey to make too. He must fly to Africa for the winter to join all the other swallows. His journey is difficult and fraught with danger.Three separate stories are woven into one powerful and moving novel whose central theme not only exposes the horrors of war and of landmines, but also the endurance of the human spirit.

Dear Olly

Michael Morpurgo

Illustrated by

Christian Birmingham

For Daniel Bennett

Dear Olly, (#ulink_d059c61f-6829-5dcf-97c8-12fb05aa1c20)

I have often thought of writing a story in movements rather than chapters – like a symphony. But for this I needed a story with three distinct yet linked themes, each with a different mood. Perhaps it was the moods and rhythms of the seasons that suggested this to me. And for me, it is swallows that are the magical conductors of the seasons.

I came across two stories that enabled me to compose my symphony story: one movement here, at home on the farm in Devon, one in Africa – and the two themes linked by a third, the swallow’s flight from home to Africa.

I heard of a young Frenchman, so moved by the misery and horror of war and suffering in Rwanda that he gave up everything, and left at once to help in the only way he knew how.

Then, a good friend of mine suffered a dreadful car accident. Full of admiration, I watched how he coped with the pain, with the change it brought to his life. I charted his recovery, his rebuilding of himself.

Dear Olly, is a story about nobility and courage, courage against all the odds – the young Frenchman’s, the swallow’s and my friend’s.

I hope you love reading it as much as I loved writing it.

MICHAEL MORPURGO

September 2000

Contents

Cover Page (#u7dff3278-4fb5-5159-9db0-fae9cfc512ce)

Title Page (#u7db8acd9-c99b-51ff-9d18-7a85bf25d3c0)

Dedication (#u56be3065-31f7-5bb7-b577-958cfa5d202a)

Dear Olly, (#u76c7c6f0-3e74-529d-8a0c-081451b1fdeb)

Olly’s Story (#uab1d925e-2676-5248-a921-b757edbf2d3a)

Hero’s Story (#litres_trial_promo)

Matt’s Story (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Michael Morpurgo (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Olly’s Story (#ulink_63acb8fc-a695-5931-a28c-bddd7b8707d0)

Olly was painting her toenails, light blue with silver glitter. She stretched out her legs and wriggled her toes. “What d’you think?” she said. She answered herself, because no-one else did. “Amazing, Olly, I think they’re just amazing.” But her mother and Matt had not even heard her. She saw they were both deeply engrossed in the television. So Olly looked too.

It was the news. Africa. Soldiers in trucks. A smoky sprawling city of tents and ramshackle huts. A child standing alone and naked by an open drain, stick-like legs, distended stomach, and crying, crying. A tented hospital. An emaciated mother sitting on a bed clutching her child to her shrivelled breast. A girl, about Olly’s age perhaps, squatting under a tree, her eyes empty of all life, eyes that had never known happiness. Flies clustered and crawled all over her face. She seemed to have neither the strength nor the will to brush them off. Olly felt overwhelmed by a terrible sadness. “It’s horrible,” she muttered.

Suddenly, without a word, Matt got up from the sofa and stormed out, banging the door.

“What’s the matter with him?” Olly asked. But she could see her mother was as mystified and as surprised as she was.

For some days now, she had known something was wrong with Matt. No jokes, no teasing, no clowning. He should have been on top of the world. Just a week or so before, his exam results had come in. Straight ‘A’s – he could go to veterinary college at Bristol just as he had planned. Olly’s mother had been ecstatic. She had rung up and invited everyone to a celebration barbecue in the garden, spare ribs and sausages and chicken. They all expected, as Olly had, that sooner or later Matt would get into his clown gear and do his party act. But he didn’t. He hardly said a word to anyone all evening.

Great Aunt Bethel, “Gaunty Bethel” as everyone called her, made a speech that took a long time coming to an end. “I just want to say well done, Matt,” she said. “I know that if your father had been here, he’d have been as proud of you as we all are.”

Olly never liked it when people talked of her father. Everyone else, it seemed, had known him, except her. To her, he was the man in the photo on the mantelpiece who had died in a car accident on his way to work one morning. She had no memories of him at all.

Gaunty Bethel had still not quite finished. “Now you can go off to college, Matt, and become a vet just like he was, just like your mother is.”

Everyone had cheered and whooped and clapped, Olly as loudly as anyone, until she saw the look on Matt’s face. He was hating every moment of it. It was true that just occasionally Matt could seem very far away and serious, lost in some deep thought. Olly knew well enough to leave him alone when he was like that. But this was quite different. He’d gone out in a fury, slamming the door behind him, and Olly wanted to know why. She went out after him.

She knew where she would find him. All summer the swallows had been flying in and out of their nest at the back of the garage. Matt had constructed a well-camouflaged hide at a discreet distance from the nest, and would sit in it for hours on end – he had done most of his exam revision up there – watching and sometimes photographing the parent swallows, as they renovated their nest, incubated their eggs, and now as they flew almost constant hunting sorties to feed their young. He never liked anyone to come too close when the swallows were nesting – he had even made his mother park her car in the street until the young had flown the nest.

Olly found him sitting up there in the hide, his knees drawn up to his chin. “Stay there. I’ll come down,” he said.

They walked together into the back garden. “They’ve hatched four,” he went on. “One more to go, I hope.” He sat down on the swing under the conker tree. It creaked and groaned under him. He didn’t say anything for a while. Then he told her: “I’ve made up my mind, Olly. I’m not going to college. I’m not going to be a vet.”

“What about Mum?” Olly said. “What’ll she say?”

“It’s not Mum’s life, is it? She wants me to be a vet because she is, because Dad was. Well, I don’t want it. She just assumed I did. They all did. Ever since I was very little, Olly, I only ever really wanted to do one thing.”

“What?”

“I just want to make people laugh. I want to make people happy. It’s what people need most, Olly. I really believe that. And I can do it. I can make people laugh. It’s what I do best.”

Olly knew that well enough. Matt had kept her smiling all her life. Whatever her troubles – at school, with her mother, with friends – he had always been able to make them go away. Somehow he could always make her laugh through her tears. He had a whole repertoire of silly walks, silly voices, silly faces, particularly silly faces – he had a face like rubber. He could mime and mimic, he could tell jokes at the same time as he juggled – bad jokes, the kind Olly liked but could never remember. And when, on special occasions, Christmases, parties, birthdays, he dressed up in his yellow-spotted clown costume, with his oversized, red check trousers and his floppy shoes, painted his face and put on his great red nose and his silly bowler hat with the lid on it, then he could reduce anyone to gales of laughter, even Gaunty Bethel – and that was saying something. He could make people happy all right.

Matt wouldn’t look at her as he spoke. “I’m going to be a clown, Olly, I mean a real clown. And now I know where I’m going to do it. I’m going where my swallows go. I’m going to Africa. Did you see that girl on the news with the flies on her face? There’s thousands like her, thousands and thousands, and I’m going to try to make them happy, some of them at least. I’m going to Africa.”

Everyone did all they could to stop him. Matt’s mother told him again and again that it was just a waste of a good education, that he was throwing away his future. Olly said it was a long way away, that he could catch diseases, and that it was dangerous in Africa with all those lions and snakes and crocodiles.

Gaunty Bethel told him in no uncertain terms just what she thought of him. “What they need in Africa, Matt,” she said, “is food and medicine and peace, not jokes. It’s absurd, ridiculous nonsense.”