From Hereabout Hill

by Michael Morpurgo

  At the end of a month or so we stood back, the two of us, and looked up at the horse and rider, finished.

  ‘Well,’ said Liza, her hands on her hips. ‘What do you think, Bonnie?’

  ‘I wish,’ I whispered, touching the tail of the horse, ‘I just wish I could do it.’

  ‘But you did do it, Bonnie,’ she said and I felt her hand on my shoulder. ‘We did it together. I couldn’t have done it without you.’ She was a little breathless as she spoke. ‘Without you, that horse would never have had a rider. I’d never have thought of it. Without you mixing my plaster, holding the bucket, I couldn’t have done it.’ Her hand gripped me tighter. ‘Do you want to do one of your own?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Of course you can. But you have to look around you first, not just glance, but really look. You have to breathe it in, become a part of it, feel that you’re a part of it. You draw what you see, what you feel. Then you make what you’ve drawn. Use clay if you like, or do what I do and build up plaster over a wire frame. Then set to work with your chisel, just like I do, until it’s how you want it. If I can do it, you can do it. I tell you what. You can have a corner of my studio if you like, just so long as you don’t talk when I’m working. How’s that?’

  So my joyous spring blossomed into a wonderful summer. After a while, I even dared to ride Peg bareback sometimes on the way back to the stable yard; and I never forgot what Liza told me. I looked about me. I listened. And the more I listened and the more I looked, the more I felt at home in this new world. I became a creature of the place. I belonged there as much as the wren that sang at me high on the vegetable garden wall, as much as the green dragonfly hovering over the pool by the water buffalo. I sketched Peg. I sketched Big Boy (I couldn’t sketch Chip – he just came out round). I bent my wire frames into shape and I began to build my first horse sculpture, layer on layer of strips of cloth dunked in plaster just like Liza did. I moulded them into shape on the frame, and when they dried I chipped away and sanded. But I was never happy with what I’d done.

  All this time, Liza worked on beside me in the studio, and harder, faster, more intensely than ever. I helped her whenever she asked me, too, mixing, holding the bucket for her, just as I had done before.

  It was a Rising Christ, she said, Christ rising from the dead, his face strong, yet gentle too, immortal it seemed; but his body, vulnerable and mortal. From time to time she’d come over and look at my stumpy effort that looked as much like a dog as a horse to me, and she would walk round it nodding her approval. ‘Coming on, coming on,’ she’d say. ‘Maybe just a little bit off here perhaps.’ And she’d chisel away for a minute or two, and a neck or leg would come to sudden life.

  I told her once, ‘Its like magic.’

  She thought for a moment, and said, ‘That’s exactly what it is, Bonnie. It’s a God-given thing, a God-given magic, and it’s not to be wasted. Don’t waste it, Bonnie. Don’t ever waste it.’

  The horse and rider came back from the foundry, bronze now and magnificent. I marvelled at it. It stood outside her studio, and when it caught the red of the evening sun, I could scarcely take my eyes off it. But these days Liza seemed to tire more easily, and she would sit longer over her tea, gazing out at her horse and rider.

  ‘I am so pleased with that, Bonnie,’ she said, ‘so pleased we did it together.’

  The Christ figure was finished and went off to the foundry a few weeks before I had to go on my summer holiday. ‘By the time you come back again,’ said Liza, ‘it should be back. It’s going to hang above the door of the village church. Isn’t that nice? It’ll be there for ever. Well, not for ever. Nothing is for ever.’

  The holiday was in Cornwall. We stayed where we always did, in Cadgwith, and I drew every day. I drew boats and gulls and lobster pots. I made sculptures with wet sand – sleeping giants, turtles, whales – and everyone thought I was mad not to go swimming and boating. The sun shone for fourteen days. I never had such a perfect holiday, even though I didn’t have my bike, or Peg or Liza with me.

  My first day back, the day before school began, I cycled out to Liza’s place with my best boat drawing in a stiff envelope under my sweater. The stable yard was deserted. There were no horses in the fields. Peg wasn’t in her stable and I could find no one up at the house, no Liza, no yappy dog. I stopped in the village to ask but there was no one about. It was like a ghost village. Then the church bell began to ring. I leant my bike up against the churchyard wall and ran up the path. There was Liza’s Rising Christ glowing in the sun above the doorway, and inside they were singing hymns.

  I crept in, lifting the latch carefully so that I wouldn’t be noticed. The hymn was just finishing. Everyone was sitting down and coughing. I managed to squeeze myself in at the end of a pew and sat down too. The church was packed. A choir in red robes and white surplices sat on either side of the altar. The vicar was taking off his glasses and putting them away. I looked everywhere for Liza’s wild white curls, but could not find her. It was difficult for me to see much over everyone’s heads. Besides, some people were wearing hats, so I presumed she was too and stopped looking for her. She’d be there somewhere.

  The vicar began. ‘Today was to be a great day, a happy day for all of us. Liza was to unveil her Rising Christ above the south door. It was her gift to us, to all of us who live here, and to everyone who will come here to our church in the centuries to come. Well, as we all now know, there was no unveiling, because she wasn’t here to do it. On Monday evening last she watched her Rising Christ winched into place. She died the next day.’

  I didn’t hear anything else he said. It was only then that I saw the coffin resting on trestles between the pulpit and the lectern, with a single wreath of white flowers laid on it, only then that I took in the awful truth.

  I didn’t cry as the coffin passed right by me on its way out of the church. I suppose I was still trying to believe it. I stood and listened to the last prayers over the grave, numb inside, grieving as I had never grieved before, or since, but still not crying. I waited until almost everyone had gone and went over to the grave. A man was taking off his jacket and hanging it on the branch of the tree. He spat on his hands, rubbed them and picked up his spade. He saw me. ‘You family?’ he said.

  ‘Sort of,’ I replied. I reached inside my sweater and pulled out the boat drawing from Cadgwith. ‘Can you put it in?’ I asked. ‘It’s a drawing. It’s for Liza.’

  ‘Course,’ he said, and he took it from me. ‘She’d like that. Fine lady, she was. The things she did with her hands. Magic, pure magic.’

  It was just before Christmas the same year that a cardboard tube arrived in the post, addressed to me. I opened it in the secrecy of my room. A rolled letter fell out, typed and very short.

  Dear Miss Mallet,

  In her will, the late Liza Bonallack instructed us, her solicitors, to send you this drawing. We would ask you to keep us informed of any future changes of address.

  With best wishes.

  I unrolled it and spread it out. It was of me sitting on Peg, swathed in Arab clothes. Underneath was written.

  For dearest Bonnie,

  I never paid you for all that mucking out, did I? You shall have this instead, and when you are twenty-one you shall have the artist’s copy of our horse and rider sculpture. But by then you will be doing your own sculptures. I know you will.

  God bless,

  Liza.

  So here I am, nearly thirty now. And as I look out at the settling snow from my studio, I see Liza’s horse and rider standing in my back garden, and all around, my own sculptures gathered in silent homage.

  Silver Ghost

  There are very few grand houses where I live, but I did hear of one. So I went to have a look.

  The parkland was rolling and gracious, the driveway imposing, but at first glance I could see no house. Then I discovered there was no house, not any more. All I found was a plaque on a wall telling me the house had been destroyed by fire. No
one knows how or why the fire started. Until now.

  At about six o’clock on the evening of November 14th, 1969, a young man came into the pub at Nethercott Cross and asked for a beer. He took it away to a corner table by the fire and began to write feverishly in a notebook. When the landlord crouched down beside him to unload an armful of logs, he scarcely looked up, so engrossed was he in his writing. After some time he shut his notebook, sat back in his chair and sipped his drink, gazing into the fire. The pub cat jumped up on to his lap. ‘So you recognise me too, do you?’ he said, laughingly.

  ‘Should he?’ said the landlord from the bar.

  ‘Well, Mr Glanville recognised me, up at Nethercott.’

  ‘Mr Glanville?’

  ‘He said I looked just like one of the portraits up there – “spitting image” he called it – and I did too. He showed me. The one in the Justice Room – it was like looking in a mirror.’

  The landlord was puzzled. ‘Who are you? Where you from?’

  ‘Nat. Nathaniel Bickford,’ replied the young man. ‘I’m from Vermont, in the US. I’ve been looking for my English roots. My folks lived up at Nethercott – way, way back, hundred years or more. What a place! And the things that old Mr Glanville told me. Quite a story.’

  ‘Percy Glanville?’ said the landlord. ‘Little bent sort of fellow? Silvery hair? Old as the hills?’

  ‘That’s the guy,’ said Nat.

  The landlord stood for a moment, frowning. ‘So he’s home again then, is he?’ he said at last. ‘I thought the old boy was still in hospital. Got a dicky heart. Well, I expect I’ll be seeing him soon then. He spends half his life in here – not that I’m complaining, mind. But between you and me, he drinks too much. He writes poetry too. Bit of a strange one, if you know what I mean.’

  That was the last time they spoke. Nathaniel Bickford, an aspiring poet himself, decided he didn’t like the landlord. He stood with his back against the fire and drank his beer down quickly. He wrapped his multicoloured scarf round his neck, picked up his rucksack and walked out into the darkness.

  Later, the landlord would recall every word that had passed between them. He would remember the rainbow-coloured scarf, the young man’s American accent, his height – about six foot one – his long, fair hair with a band round it like tennis players wear, and the exact time the young man had left. He told the police: ‘I’d say he stayed for about half an hour, no more. So he must have left just after six-thirty.’

  At half-past seven that same evening, Gabriel Penberthy, who grazed his sheep on the parkland around Nethercott House, looked out of his bathroom window at home. He noticed that every light up in the house seemed to be on and he thought that was strange, because no one lived there. The place was due to be opened to the public in a week. There was some plumbing work still being done, but he remembered seeing the plumber’s van rattling off down the drive at dusk. No one else should have been up there. Gabriel Penberthy pulled aside the net curtain, opened the window and looked out. Then he saw that the lights were not lights at all but flickering flames. The house was ablaze from end to end. He could see smoke now, rising black into the moonlit night and sparks were funnelling up from the chimney stacks.

  It was Gabriel Penberthy who called the fire brigade. The fire engines came from Holsworthy, Torrington and Hatherleigh. But they were too late and too few. Nothing could be done.

  Meanwhile Nathaniel Bickford had at last hitched a ride back into Hatherleigh in a smelly Land Rover with a calf in the back. The driver sniffed and wiped his nose with his sleeve, eyed Nat with suspicion but said nothing all the way there. Back in his bedroom at The George, Nat had a deep and steaming bath, and shivered the cold out of him. Afterwards he lay on his bed and read through the notes he’d made back at the pub at Nethercott Cross. The extraordinary events of the day and the old man’s story had set his mind racing. He decided to write it down right away so that he lost none of the detail of it, so that it was fresh in his head. He sat propped up against a pile of pillows, put his diary against his knees and the notebook on the bed beside him and began to write.

  November 18th

  I have walked today the soil my ancestors walked a hundred years ago. I have sat in the chairs my ancestors sat in a hundred years ago. I have stretched out on their beds. I have rummaged through their cellars. In my rucksack I have a handful of ancestral acorns and I shall plant them back home in Vermont. They’ll grow roots in Spring Farm soil just as my family did a century ago. Mission accomplished. Roots discovered. But roots wasn’t all I discovered today. In the process I came up with something a whole lot more interesting.

  This is my second night at The George – very quaint and olde England: thatched roof, oak beams to hit your head on, and genuine cobwebs from the sixteenth century. And beer! Last night I drank a lot of their warm beer, too much. Why do I always drink too much? I managed to struggle out this morning in time for a late breakfast – bacon and eggs and sausages. No maple syrup, no waffles, but breakfast is about the best thing the Brits do when it comes to food. I thumbed a ride through a kind of marshy, dank wasteland and found myself at Nethercott house – the ‘family seat’ – at about noon. Some guy in a tractor dropped me at the end of the drive, said I had a long walk ahead of me, and that there’d like as not be no one up there in the house to let me in. Gloomy kind of a guy, lugubrious. He turned out to be right. It was a long way up that drive, but the sight of Nethercott House standing proud, looking down over its wonderful rolling parkland, beckoned me on.

  Some might think it a plain sort of a house, brick-built, symmetrical, a bit severe perhaps. But it suits the place. It fits in the landscape just like it grew there. Not large enough to dominate, not small enough to be ignored, it simply belongs. I had to keep reminding myself as I walked up the drive. This is really it! This is where the Bickfords come from. This is my place. And the lugubrious guy on the tractor was proved right again. Except for an old pick-up truck parked at the side of the house there was no one about.

  The house was bathed in cold autumn sunlight and there was a stillness over the place that made it all seem unreal. Only the sheep moved, scattering when I came near and looking at me with accusing eyes, wishing me away. The flock drifted into the valley, bleating balefully at me. I bleated right back and laughed aloud at them. That was when I happened to glance up at the house. I saw a face in an attic window, hands flat on the windowpane either side of it, a face that fixed me with a look so hostile that I hesitated about venturing any nearer. Hell no, I thought, I’ve come all this way across the Atlantic to see this place. I’m not letting a pair of eyes scare me off. I waved cheerily at the face and it vanished at once. I walked on, steeling myself.

  It was some minutes later that I first heard the knocking, metal on metal or wood on metal. I couldn’t be sure which. It came not from the house itself, but from the woods behind and beyond. I passed alongside a high stone garden wall, the knocking so regular that I thought it must be mechanical. Through the trees I glimpsed open garage doors; and inside, a large car shrouded in a white sheet. The knocking had stopped, and then out of the hollow silence came a man’s voice, and none too friendly.

  ‘Give us a hand here, will you?’ The man wasn’t just old, he was ancient. He had a mallet in his hand. The gas tank beside him was covered in ivy.

  ‘Beggering tap’s stuck again,’ he said. ‘You have a go.’

  The tap moved at the second blow and came free at the next. The gas poured out into the can below, splashing over my feet. I stepped back quickly and almost tripped. The old man had me by the elbow and steadied me. ‘We’ll wipe it off inside,’ he said and turned off the tap. When he turned round he was beaming at me. He took off his flat cap and held out a shaky hand. ‘I’m Percy Glanville,’ he said. ‘I live here. This is my place.’ The old man’s hand was cold in mine. His face was shrunken and shrivelled with age. There was a grey pallor in his cheeks, and his eyes were bloodshot, as if he had not slept for a year. His coat –
a khaki military coat – had no buttons and was tied around his waist with string. The only thing clean about him was his silver hair.

  ‘Is it your car?’ I asked him. I was curious to know what was under the covers.

  ‘Oh yes. She’s mine.’ His eyes twinkled with excitement. ‘You want to see her?’

  ‘She looks like a ghost under that sheet,’ I said.

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ he chuckled, and he took hold of the sheet. ‘Close your eyes. Go on . . . now you can open them.’ The car shimmered silver in the sunlight. It shone so brightly that my eyes hurt and I had to turn away.

  ‘Well?’ The old man was at my shoulder.

  ‘It’s magnificent,’ I said, running my hand along her cold bonnet. ‘Old Rolls-Royce, isn’t it?’

  ‘1921 Rolls-Royce. Silver Ghost. Park Ward body. We had her from new. She’s only done 21,000 miles in forty-eight years, and I drove every one of them myself. That’s the best car in the world you’re looking at, and she’s mine. Worth a fortune too, but I’d never sell her. You want to see inside her?’ He never waited for a reply. He showed me over the engine, which was as highly polished as the rest. He told me how he had only recently ground down the pistons. Every detail of the car was a marvel to him, from the red badge on the radiator, to the walnut dash, to the matching suitcases in the carpeted boot. I never knew that anyone could love a car so much.

  ‘She needs petrol,’ he said, unscrewing the cap. ‘Be a good lad and pour it for me, will you?’ It was a moment or two before I remembered that ‘petrol’ was gas. I used a funnel, but the can was awkward and the angle wrong, so that by the time I had finished, my trousers were spattered with gas.