“Yes,” I said. “Where are we going?”
“To market. It is market day tomorrow in town, and I think you are well enough now to come with us. We shall see the carousel turning, hear Maman’s barrel organ. How would you like that?”
I hardly slept a wink that night – an eighteen-year-old boy so excited over the prospect of seeing a carousel. Hardly cool, is it?
They had a car. It was ridiculous, I know, but I really had imagined we would be going by horse and cart. Instead, we drove to town in a bouncy French car made of corrugated tin, with an engine that sounded like my mother’s old sewing machine at home. We drove down the farm track along the canal, over the bridge, and there ahead of me was the walled town of Aigues-Mortes. We parked outside the town walls and walked in under the great gateway into the crowded streets. I could already hear a barrel organ playing. Sure enough it was “Sur le Pont d’Avignon”. Lorenzo was humming along happily to the music, clapping his hands.
There at last I had my first sight of it, in the town square, the carousel turning, turning. The square was full of people browsing the market stalls, watching the carousel, strolling the streets, sitting in the cafés. Kezia introduced me to her cousins and friends as “the English friend Lorenzo had found half dead in the marshes”. I liked that.
It was a while before the carousel stopped, and Lorenzo and I could get on. I rode Elephant because Lorenzo said I should, and he rode Val, of course. Everyone else on the rides was a child, but no one seemed to mind us being there. Everyone knew Lorenzo, and I was with Flamingo Boy – as he was still known – so it was fine. Then “Sur le Pont d’Avignon” was playing on the barrel organ again, and the carousel was turning, turning. I don’t think I had ever been on a carousel before. I loved every minute of it, Lorenzo’s uninhibited joy, and the music, especially the music. It was truly a resplendent, magical, glorious thing, this carousel.
As it turned and turned, I was remembering everything, the whole history of the carousel, of the family who had made it, of everything that had happened in this square. The story behind it all came back to me, and I lived it again in my mind. When it stopped, I wanted to have another go at once. But there were dozens of other children waiting to get on – young children, proper children, not like me.
I was sitting there on Elephant, rather reluctant to get off, when something happened that I shall never forget as long as I live. Lorenzo was mounted on Horse and I noticed he was unusually still, perfectly still, as if in some kind of trance. I thought at first this might be a sign that he was going to have a fit – I had seen them begin like this before, like the calm before a storm. But then he got off Horse, climbed down from the carousel, and started walking determinedly into the crowd of people, who parted for him as he came through. I followed him with Kezia. He was walking towards the mairie.
Outside the mairie I saw an old man standing there on his own. He was leaning heavily on a stick, watching Lorenzo coming towards him. Everyone in the square knew something very strange was happening. Silence had fallen. Lorenzo walked right up to the old man and looked him in the face. He reached out and touched his hair, his face, then smelled his fingers.
“Capo?” he said. “Capo?”
The old man nodded. There were tears running down his face. “Willi Brenner, Lorenzo,” he replied. “Or Capo Capo, whichever you like.”
Then Kezia was there, the three of them together, arms round one another.
I stood and watched. Before my eyes, the story had come full circle.
Kezia turned and called me over. I shook his hand. He was still tall, if a little bent. His hair was white, what there was of it. Lorenzo could not stop touching his face, his hair.
So I was there when Willi Brenner reached into his pocket and gave it back to Kezia, the scorched fragment of the icon of Saint Sarah. “I brought this back,” he said. “You must keep it now. It has looked after me, as I think you wanted it to. It is yours. It always was.”
And this is the true end of the story, the end of the road. With Kezia’s encouragement, and at Lorenzo’s insistence, I stayed in the Camargue, helped out on the farm, never went to college or university. I settled here and, many years later, I wrote this book. While I was writing, Kezia told me I should always keep their precious fragment of the icon of Saint Sarah beside me all the time – to guide my hand, she said.
So I had it with me when I began writing this some months ago, sitting on the beach in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the beach where, I discovered, Vincent van Gogh had sat and painted his picture of the four boats, the same beach where Kezia told me they had found all those planks of wood. And I came back here today to sit on the beach, and finish it, to write these last words of my story, the icon on the sand beside me. This seemed the right place to do it. Full circle again. I like full circles.
I think it was no accident that Vincent van Gogh had called one of those fishing boats he painted Amitié – friendship. He had sought friendship all his life, and died from the lack of it. I have been luckier, much luckier. I followed the bend in the road that began in Watford all those long years ago, and it led me here. I have found friendship, a home too, and much more besides, here, in this wild and wonderful place of flying pink flamingos.
Also by Michael Morpurgo
ALONE ON A WIDE WIDE SEA
THE AMAZING STORY OF ADOLPHUS TIPS
BILLY THE KID
BORN TO RUN
THE BUTTERFLY LION
COOL!
DANCING BEAR
DEAR OLLY
AN EAGLE IN THE SNOW
AN ELEPHANT IN THE GARDEN
FARM BOY
THE FOX AND THE GHOST KING
KASPAR – PRINCE OF CATS
LISTEN TO THE MOON
LITTLE MANFRED
A MEDAL FOR LEROY
MR SKIP
OUTLAW
PRIVATE PEACEFUL
RUNNING WILD
SHADOW
SPARROW
TORO! TORO!
Illustrated in full colour
PINOCCHIO
TOTO
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