Flamingo Boy

by Michael Morpurgo

  Shortly afterwards, the officer and the soldiers came out of the mairie. The officer got in the car and was driven off; and the tall giant of a soldier was marching all the others away. The crowd broke up; the market stalls shut down; cafés and shops closed their doors. The square emptied.

  By this time too, we were closing down the carousel. Nancy and Henri and Lorenzo stayed with us, helping to put up the shutters all around. We were almost the only people left in the square now. When we had finished, we all went back to our caravan by the canal, lit the lamp, closed the door behind us and shut ourselves in.

  I remember thinking that after this nothing would ever be the same again. But I had another thought as we huddled there together in our caravan, that we were all in a way part of the same family now. We may not have known one another that well or for very long, but at that moment we all felt very together somehow, protective of one another, close.

  Maman was fiercely determined nothing should change just because the Germans were in the town, that we should go on just the same.

  “Otherwise they win,” she said, struggling to hold back her tears, “and we must never let that happen. So, the carousel goes on turning; and, Kezia, you must go on with your lessons out at the farm. Is that all right, Nancy?” Nancy was still too upset to speak, but she nodded. “And as for Lorenzo,” Maman went on, “wasn’t he wonderful? Facing up to the soldiers like that! Flamingo Boy is the hero of the town, if you ask me!”

  We all laughed, because we needed to, and Lorenzo clapped his hands, delighted we were laughing. He loves laughter, as you know already, Vincent. He loves people to be happy around him.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Be Proud and Carry On

  “So, after the Germans came that day, I would cycle out to the farm just as I had before, as often as possible. Maman and Papa went every day to the square to open up the carousel, but very few people came now. Papa became very disconsolate at times, and kept saying we should take it down, pack up and move on somewhere new. But Maman argued that it would be the same elsewhere, that the Germans were bound to be everywhere by now, that wherever we went we would not be able to escape them. She insisted that once people got used to having the Germans about – and they would – they would come out again to enjoy themselves. It was human nature, she said, for people to want to have fun, and that maybe they would need the carousel even more now, to raise spirits, to forget their troubles, the war and the Occupation. We had to be proud and carry on.

  Every day, if the weather was fair, Maman and Papa would go to the town square, open up the carousel, play the barrel organ and wait for the families and children to come. I loved to hear “Sur le Pont d’Avignon” echoing around the square. It was our song, a song all French people knew and loved. And that was important now, even to a child as young as I was. I understood what it meant. That song was part of who we were, and the Germans could not take it away from us.

  Maman put up posters all over the town, and handed out dozens of leaflets telling everyone that it was half price now for a ride on the Charbonneau Carousel. Still people didn’t come. In the town square now, there were always German soldiers to be seen, drinking in the cafés, strolling in the streets, wandering wherever they liked, chatting to anyone who would talk to them. They were making themselves at home. One or two even came to have a ride on the carousel, which only made Papa even more upset. He told them the carousel was for children, but they just laughed and got up on to it anyway. There was nothing he could do. I hated to see them there too, which was another reason why I was always more than happy to go off to the farm for my lessons, and to see Lorenzo. I longed for my lessons, and I longed even more to be with Lorenzo.

  My lessons went on with Nancy right here in this room, sitting just where you are now, Vincent. I still enjoyed them, but I wanted more and more to be outside with Lorenzo. Nancy knew it, of course. She would see me looking longingly out of the window, and sometimes she would take pity on me and cut my lessons short. She would often send me on my way with her book of King Arthur stories.

  “Go on, then, Kezia, go and read to him in his Camelot. It is good for your reading practice anyway,” she would say. “He would love it if you read it to him there.”

  So that’s what I often did. On the great stone in the courtyard of the ruined castle in the marshes, I would sit and read to Lorenzo. He liked it so much that he never wanted me to stop. I could see him mouthing every word as I read it, living the story in his head. Some of it he really did know word for word, and sometimes would even finish the sentence for me. The words might be garbled, abbreviated, but they were recognisable. He was telling me the story his way. We had magical times together in that place. I always hated to leave.

  Every time I cycled home now, I knew I would find Papa ever more silent and sombre in the caravan. I sensed also that Maman was tense, and not herself at all. She was nervous, frightened even, whenever she heard voices from across the canal or outside the caravan. She dodged my questions, and, however much I asked, would not tell me what it was that was troubling her. I thought it must be the Occupation, of course, the constant presence of the German soldiers in the town. As I was to discover later, it was much more than that.

  So, over the days and weeks that followed, the caravan became an ever more sad and difficult place for me to come home to. Out on the farm, with my other family – as I had come to think of them by now – I felt free and happy, with no thought of the Occupation. I just wanted to stay there with Lorenzo in his Camelot for as long as I could, and so would try to find any excuse to put off cycling home until the last possible moment.

  On the day it happened, there were grey clouds gathering over the marshes. I told Nancy that a storm was coming in from the sea and that I could be blown off my bike on the road home, that maybe I should wait a while and not go home yet, not until the storm had passed. But Nancy knew my game. She said I was right, that there was a storm coming, which was all the more reason why I should go home now, before it got any worse. I never argued with Nancy – I never even tried. I liked her too much, and anyway I knew I would not win.

  So, whether I wanted to or not, I had to go. As usual, Lorenzo walked me down the farm track a little way. We said goodbye, and he pushed me off on my bicycle as he always did, and ran along beside me till I was going too fast for him. It was the same every time.

  Lorenzo loved everything to be the same, even goodbyes. Goodbyes, hellos, sausages and songs, he loved what he knew, never wanted anything to be different. The trouble is that things do change, whether we like it or not. And for Lorenzo any change was always difficult. It still is sometimes.

  A mistral wind is wild and unpredictable, Vincent, and treacherous too. There was a strong and gusting wind on the way back, but I had an easy enough ride along the canal, for a while. The track is quite protected there. Then, quite suddenly, I found myself out of the shelter of the high rushes and on the open road, with nothing but wide lakes on either side of me, at the mercy of the sudden fury of a vicious gale that was roaring in over the marshes. There was no hiding place. I just had to put my head down and pedal hard. I cycled most of the way into a headwind so strong that time and again I was forced to get off and walk. The water in the lakes was being whipped up into white-capped waves – I had never seen it like that before.

  Cycling became impossible. I had to walk the rest of the way. As I came over the bridge just outside the town walls, it was all I could do to keep upright in the wind. There was driving rain with it now that was stinging my eyes if ever I tried to lift my head.

  I knew something was wrong as soon as I reached our field. The door of the caravan was open and banging in the wind. Honey was in the field, but I could not see Maman and Papa anywhere. I called for them. No one answered. I looked inside the caravan. No one was there. So they had to be at the carousel in town. But in a storm like this no one would be on the rides. Maman and Papa would have shut it down by now. Maybe they were still busy doing it. It w
as the only place left I could think of to look for them.

  I left my bicycle, and set off on foot, running. As I came into the town square, I saw at once what had happened. The great plane tree in the middle of the square had been uprooted, and had come crashing down right on top of our carousel. It lay there in pieces under the branches, crushed, flattened, destroyed. A huge crowd of people was gathered round, Maman and Papa amongst them. They were standing side by side, Maman’s head on Papa’s shoulder, looking down at the wreckage of their lives.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The Day the Music Died

  “Standing there in the square with Maman and Papa, I could feel my whole being dissolve with sadness. Horse, Bull, Dragon, Elephant, all our rides, all our animals, lay there on the ground, broken and shattered.

  Everyone was watching Papa now as he walked forward, brushing aside the leaves, stepping over the branches and the ruins of our carousel, and of Maman’s barrel organ. Until then, I hadn’t seen it lying there crushed, directly under the huge trunk of the tree, the generator beside it. Papa crouched down to pick up the remains of one of the flying pink flamingos. He stood up, piecing them together in his hands.

  Then holding it high above his head, he said: “We will mend it.” He repeated it, his voice full of fierce determination, shouting it out so that everyone should hear him against the roaring wind: “We will mend it!”

  That was when I noticed some of the German soldiers standing there in amongst the crowd of onlookers, and I recognised the giant soldier. He was wearing a grey cap, not a helmet this time. His hair, I noticed, was snow-white, which was strange for a man who was not that old. He was coming through the crowd towards us, and I was wondering why he limped, I remember. He stood there, tall and stiff, in front of Papa.

  “They tell me you are Monsieur Charbonneau, the owner of this carousel.” He spoke as stiffly as he stood. Papa did not reply. “Your papers? Identity papers?” the soldier demanded. Papa handed them over without a glance at him. “I have orders to clear all this away,” the soldier went on. He handed the papers back.

  “We shall do it ourselves,” said Papa quietly.

  “Very well, monsieur, as you wish.” I thought that was all he was going to say. He noticed me then, standing beside Papa, and I saw that he remembered me. “I wish to say, monsieur,” he said, “that this was a very fine and beautiful carousel. I am sorry this happened.”

  “You do not need to apologise,” Papa told him, but still not looking at him. “It was the mistral, the wind, that did this,” Papa went on, “which is stronger than you are, stronger than all of us. You and your kind are to blame for much, but not for this, not for the mistral.”

  “I understand, monsieur,” the soldier said. “But should you wish us to help you clear—”

  “I thank you for your offer, but we can manage without your help,” Papa told him coldly. And now he did look up at him, his face full of defiance. “If you really want to help, then perhaps you might take your soldiers and go back home where you belong.”

  The two men stood for some moments in silence, the giant soldier towering over Papa.

  “Nonetheless,” the soldier said. “I am sorry for your misfortune, monsieur.” He smiled down at me then, and I found myself liking him, despite his uniform. I remember feeling a pang of shame that I liked him when I knew I should not, and all at the same time I was glowing with pride at how brave Papa had been to speak his mind.

  Shortly afterwards, the giant soldier led his men away, but most of the townspeople remained, unable to leave, still stunned at the destruction before their eyes, some of them crying openly, the older ones especially. I thought at the time, of course, that it was the destruction of the carousel they were sorrowing over, but I have realised since then that, for many there that day, the grieving must have been over the loss of the great plane tree which had towered over their town, over their lives, and the lives of their forebears for hundreds of years, standing there as solid as the ancient church, and now so suddenly and cruelly struck down.

  For many of the townspeople, the fall of that much-loved tree – so soon after the arrival of German occupiers – must have represented the ruination of everything that was precious to them, their town, their country, their liberty. The great tree was dead, but the leaves were still being blown about in great gusts, as if it was in its death throes.

  To see old people in tears very nearly broke my resolve not to cry. But then, in just a few moments, all my sorrow was banished, and I was overwhelmed by a great and sudden gladness that held back my tears. Papa, Maman and I found ourselves surrounded and comforted by the townspeople, men, women and children – some of my worst school enemies amongst them. Monsieur Dubarry, the mayor, had his arm round Papa’s shoulder. He, like so many, had rarely so much as deigned to speak to Roma people like us. But here they were, all gathering round us in our hour of need, voicing their opinions as to what should be done, and how. They were talking over one another so much that I could understand little of what they were saying or proposing, or what was going on. I knew only that somehow they were all intent on helping us recover what we could from this catastrophe.

  Soon enough, the debate over, the square became a hive of activity. Horses and carts were sent for, axes and saws were fetched, and they all set to, hacking, chopping, sawing away at the crown of the tree, pulling aside the great branches that had crushed our beloved carousel. All this time, the rain lashed down and the wind raged around us. Tiles were blown off the rooftops and sent crashing to the ground; and those trees still standing in the square were being rocked and shaken above us with such violence that I was sure more of them must come down at any moment. But the townspeople seemed oblivious to all this. They worked on tirelessly. We all did, together.

  Madame Salomon, my kind teacher from school, was there too, I noticed, a scarf covering her hair and head as if she did not wish to be seen. I wanted to run over and ask her why she had left the school, but she was too busy, and so was I. Our eyes met through the leaves of the fallen tree, and she smiled at me. When I looked up again, she was nowhere to be seen.

  The more we pulled and cleared away the crown of the tree, the more we discovered that the damage done to the carousel was even worse than we had first supposed. Some of our animal rides were so broken up, so fragmented, that they were unrecognisable. As far as I could see, not a single one of the sixteen animals I knew and loved so well had survived intact, nor had the machinery that Papa maintained meticulously so that every day it turned the carousel smoothly and regularly, at exactly five circuits a minute, no more, no less. It lay now battered and twisted under the debris of the tree. Papa bent down and retrieved his wooden cranking handle, and gave it to me for safekeeping. That at least was unbroken. He smiled for the first time then.

  “Look after it, Kezia,” he said. “We’ll be needing it again.”

  By now, with the scale of the devastation evident before our eyes, we should have been in the depths of despair. But the recovery was already in full swing, everyone organising everyone else, all of us retrieving what we could and, with the greatest of care, Maman, Papa and I joining in the great rescue, gathering whatever we could. I picked up the head and broken horn of Bull, half the tail and a hoof of Horse, and the fractured leg of a flying pink flamingo.

  By now, several carts were drawn up outside the church, horses pawing at the cobbles, heads tossing, impatient to be going. Soon a chain of townspeople was set up across the square and the remnants of the carousel were being passed from hand to hand, Papa and Maman supervising the loading of the carts outside the church. My chief tormentors at school, Joseph and Bernadette, were there in the chain, I saw, and many other children from school, all of whom had given me such a hard time, called me names, pulled my hair, thrown stones at me, spat at me even from across the street. When I smiled at them now, they smiled back, even Joseph, even Bernadette. I was amazed, and pleased, and angry all at the same time.

  One by one,
the carts would disappear and return a while later to be filled again. So it went on, until every single piece of the carousel had been carried off. Maman, Papa and I followed the last cart down the street, through the gateway under the town walls, over the canal, to our field, where Honey was grazing contentedly in the wind and rain, seemingly oblivious to us, to everything that had happened, and to the ruins of our beloved carousel that now lay all around her.

  There it was, spread out on the grass in pieces, our precious carousel, like some enormous jigsaw puzzle emptied haphazardly out of the box and waiting to be put together. Some fragments had been deliberately gathered and arranged, so that a few of the animals were already a little more recognisable. I noticed at once that two of Dragon’s legs and his tail were laid out together, and so was Elephant’s head, one ear and half of his trunk.

  For some time, none of us spoke. Only then, I think, did I begin to take it all in, and the tears came at last, filling my eyes, running down my cheeks. I wiped them away, but Papa had already noticed. He put an arm round me.

  “We are alone now, Kezia,” he said. “You cry all you like. But always remember this: that everything happens for a reason, that beyond the clouds there is blue sky, beyond the sadness there is always joy. I mean we made friends today, did we not? And one day this carousel will turn again and the music will play and the children will come. It will happen. Maman and I, we made it once. We will make it again, and this time we have you to help us. You look after my cranking handle. I shall be needing it one day.” I had never before heard Papa talk so passionately.

  “Papa is right. What is broken can always be mended,” Maman told me, stroking my hair and kissing the top of my head. “And the townspeople, they want it to be mended. You saw that they love the carousel, as we do. Why else did they bring all this here for us? We shall make it happen.”