The Classic Morpurgo Collection (six novels)

by Michael Morpurgo

  Joe had got to his feet by now. “Yours is he?” he asked.

  “He’s Becky’s really, my daughter’s. They ran off together, the two of them. They had good reason, believe me. She had an accident, but she’s all right now, thank God. Much better.”

  “That’s good,” Joe said. “So you’ll be taking him home then, I suppose?”

  “I don’t think so,” she replied. “We’ve got nowhere to keep him, not any more. As soon as she’s out of hospital – probably tomorrow, the doctor says – we’ll be moving on. Things didn’t work out back home, so Becky and me, we’ll be staying in my mum’s flat for a while, just till we find somewhere on our own. We’re better off on our own. Becky was right about that. She was right about a lot of things. But that’s another story. Anyway, the trouble is, Mum’s got cats, three of them. She loves them to bits, and she hates all dogs. So do the cats.

  “I’ve talked to Becky about it. She’s upset, of course she is. She’d love to keep him if she could, but she knows we can’t. She’ll be happy enough if she knows he’s gone to a good home. It looks to me like maybe he’s found one already.”

  For a few moments Joe didn’t seem to know quite what to say. “To tell you the honest truth, I really hadn’t thought about keeping him,” he said. “It hadn’t even occurred to me. I mean, I’m planning on being on the move a lot, I’ve got things to do, and I hadn’t bargained on… But then maybe… maybe it’d be good to have a companion along, someone to talk to. He’s a good listener, I know that.” He smoothed my face and fondled my ears gently. “He’s got kind eyes, just like Paddywack. My wife had a dog a bit like this. Paddywack, he was called, because she liked the song – y’know the one, ‘Knick Knack Paddywack, give a dog a bone’, that one. He was a lurcher, fast like a greyhound, faithful too. A good friend. Marion loved him, more than she loved me sometimes, I reckon. Yes, maybe it’s a good idea at that.”

  “Well, old son,” he went on, patting my neck gently, and looking me in the eye. “Haven’t got much to offer you, except friendship. I’ve got lots of that.” He smiled and I knew right away I was in safe hands, that here was someone I could trust. He looked up at Becky’s mother, “All right, why not? If he’ll have me, I’ll have him. You tell that daughter of yours in the hospital not to worry, that he’ll be well looked after, I promise.”

  “I’ll tell her,” said Becky’s mother. She was crouching down over me now, her eyes full of tears. “I still don’t understand it. How could he? They’re so beautiful, so trusting. How could he have done it?”

  “Done what?” Joe asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, standing up abruptly and moving away. “It’s nothing. Anyway, he won’t be doing it again – I made sure of that.” She looked at me. “You’ll give him a good life, won’t you? He deserves it.” And then she was gone, hurrying away from us back into the hospital.

  “Botheration,” said Joe after a while. “I never asked her what you were called, did I? Never mind. New life. New name. As it should be. I think I’m going to call you Paddywack. Marion would like that.”

  I had a place to sleep, on a blanket right by the baking oven in Joe’s Tattyvan. I loved the warmth of the place and the smell of it and the cheese fillings too. I missed Becky, of course I did, just like I missed Patrick before her. I didn’t forget them, they were a part of my life, a part of me. I knew how much they had loved me, how much I loved them and owed them. But now I was with Joe, and I knew we’d get on fine, that like Patrick and Becky, he was someone who would look after me, someone I could trust completely.

  “Knick Knack, Paddywack”

  Joe Mahoney didn’t live in a house, not any more. He lived in a barge, on the canal. He’d been living there for nearly two years, and in all that time he’d lived there alone. This was the first time he’d ever invited anyone else on board. In fact, one way or another, Joe had been living alone for very much longer than that. He’d got accustomed to being on his own, and was wondering, as he drove home in the Tattyvan with Paddywack sitting beside him looking out of the window, whether he’d really done the right thing in taking him on.

  It had been on the spur of the moment. He was still trying to work out why he’d agreed to it quite so easily, quite so quickly. Maybe it had been meant, he thought, fated in some way. After all, this was his last day on the road with the Tattyvan, the end of an era for him, and the beginning of another. There was something else though. The dog had a familiar look about him, almost as if old Paddywack had come back from the grave – not a lurcher maybe, but a greyhound was close enough. He had the same gentle look in his eye. And perhaps in the back of his mind was the thought that for what he was going to have to do, it would be good not to be alone. He hadn’t been looking forward to the days that lay ahead, not one bit. It was just something that had to be done. Now at least he’d have someone to talk to, someone to be with.

  Joe looked at him sideways and the dog looked back at him, as if waiting for him to say something. So he did say something. “Normally,” Joe began, “normally I talk to myself, and not because I’m mad, not much anyway. It’s because I like the sound of a voice, any voice. It’s silences I don’t like. Marion and me, we used to chat away all the time, and I miss that. I like the radio, like the sound of the water lapping around the barge, the ducks and the Canada geese – bit too noisy sometimes, they are, especially first thing in the morning. I expect you’d like to talk if you could, wouldn’t you? But since you can’t, I’ll have to do the talking for the both of us, won’t I?” The dog was licking his lips and panting. He seemed to be smiling, and he seemed to be listening too.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Paddywack. You’re thinking: ‘Who is this funny old bloke driving around in a van that looks like a giant potato.’ You don’t know the first thing about me, do you? So here it comes: potted history of Joe Mahoney, otherwise known as the Tattyman. Age sixty-nine. Car mechanic, learned it in the army, fixing Land Rovers, lorries, that sort of thing. Mr Fixit, Marion used to call me – she called me a lot of other stuff too, come to think of it.” He chuckled then.

  “I had this shed out at the back of the house, my workshop, and she’d ring the bell when it was time for tea. Sometimes I wouldn’t hear it because I was always sawing or planing or drilling. Then I’d come in a bit late, and we’d have a right old row. But we fixed that too. ‘Never let the sun go down on a quarrel,’ she’d say, and we never did. She’d get mad at me because the tea was cold. Could she get mad at me!”

  His laughter turned suddenly to tears. “Don’t take any notice. I’ve done quite a bit of crying over the past few years, I can’t seem to stop myself. Silly old fool I am. Well, she went and got ill, didn’t she? Parkinson’s disease it was. Not much at first – her head shook a little that’s all. But then later when it got bad, she needed a lot of looking after. That’s when I had to give up the regular job in the garage, and bought the Tattyvan – so I could be my own boss. I’d only go out in the Tattyvan when she was well enough to leave. Things worked out fine too, for a while. But then she got worse and she could see I wasn’t coping any more. I said it was fine, but she wouldn’t listen. She insisted. She said she’d go into Fairlawns, the nursing home down the road, and we had a bit of a row about that too. But she talked me round, like she always did.

  “Anyway, Fairlawns turned out to be the best place in the world for her. Mrs Bellamy runs it like a ship, but she’s a good and kind captain. Lovely caring people up there. Nothing was ever too much trouble. The trouble was, the Tattyvan wasn’t bringing in enough money – I just wasn’t out on the road often enough. That was part of the problem anyway. Couldn’t pay the bills. Clever with engines, hopeless with money, that’s me.

  “So with money running short, I had to sell the house – I didn’t like being there without Marion anyway. And that’s when I bought the barge, bought it for a song. Never told her. There was no point. Her memory had gone – sometimes she didn’t even know who I was. It was a funny thing; she
talked a lot about Paddywack, asked about him a lot, asked why I never brought him in to see her – and he’d been dead for years, five or six years at least by this time. But he stayed alive in her head right to the end. Maybe she was right after all, maybe old Paddywack didn’t die. He was just resting and now he’s come back as you, if you see what I’m saying. She’d like that. She’d like you.”

  Joe parked the van in its usual place under the trees down by the canal, and let Paddywack out. He locked the van, and then patted it affectionately. “Been good to me, this old thing. ‘My brilliant idea’, I called it. Marion said I was mad, ‘off my trolley’, she said, I remember. But she had to laugh when she saw it.”

  The van was an old Bedford camper van, about forty years old. Joe had bought it for £150, restored it and done it up as his Tattyvan. He’d found an old Victorian oven in the same scrap yard where he’d discovered the van, and installed it in the back, built a serving counter with an opening hatch at one side and a little kitchen along the other, with a new sink and worktop too, and room for the gas cylinder underneath. But the best thing about it wasn’t the ingenious potato baking technology, but the van itself. Joe had transformed it into one huge baked potato on wheels, with its own headlights and wipers, with its own chimney. He’d made and painted his own sign: “Mr Tattyman, Best baked potatoes in the whole world. Choice of fillings, £3 each.” He’d hook it up on the side of the van whenever he found a pitch, on industrial estates, outside shopping centres and schools, at fêtes and carnivals, but most often outside the hospital because it wasn’t too far from Fairlawns Nursing Home.

  It was Marion who had first named it the Tattyvan, and named him Mr Tattyman too. After Marion first went into Fairlawns the business had gone quite well, for a while. Joe could be out in his Tattyvan for most of the day. It had novelty appeal, fun appeal. But the truth was there were never enough customers to make it pay, and Joe didn’t like to put up the price of the potatoes because he thought the children wouldn’t be able to afford them if he did – it was children outside school gates who made up at least half his customers.

  But Joe didn’t do it just for the money. He loved getting in his van every morning, being out there on the road; loved serving his regular customers who, like Lynn at the hospital, very soon became his friends. One of his favourite pitches had been the Fairlawns Nursing Home itself. His visits proved to be the highlight of the day for the old people. Every time he came to see Marion, several of them would come out and buy one of his potatoes. Then he’d go up and sit with Marion for a while afterwards before going home to his barge.

  The barge had been a complete wreck when he’d bought it, rotting and rusting away and quite unable to move from its mooring. Joe had renovated it throughout and rebuilt the engine. And now, at long last, it was finished.

  “There it is, Paddywack,” he said proudly. “Your new home. What d’you think? I’ve called her The Lady Marion – seemed the right name. I started up the engine for the first time last week, and it works too, works a treat. Soon as I’ve done what I’ve got to do, done what I promised her, I’m going to move the potato oven from the van into the barge. We’ll sell the Tattyvan, and then off we go, free as the birds. That’s how we’re going to live. We’re going to chunter about all over the country, up and down the canals, tie up whenever we feel like it, wherever we want, and sell our potatoes to keep the pennies coming in. We won’t get rich, but we’ll do all right. I’ve worked it all out.” He bent down and stroked Paddywack. “Till an hour or two ago I was going to do this alone. Some things just happen along. You just happened along, and I’m very glad you did. Come on board, old son, and I’ll show you round.”

  Paddywack soon curled up on the chair by the wood-burning stove and looked about him. The welcome smell of cooking was filling the barge. He lifted his nose and savoured it. “It’s bacon,” said Joe, laughing. “I hope you like it, because I eat an awful lot of it. You can have some of my rinds too. I’ve made them nice and crispy. It’s going to be a very long day tomorrow. From now on until it’s over, every day’s going to be very busy, and very long too, and the nights even longer still, I expect. You’ll be wondering what I’m going on about, won’t you. Since you’ll be with me, I reckon you’ve got a perfect right to know. Come and get your bacon first. I’ve got digestive biscuits too. It’s what I live on, bacon butties and brown sauce and digestive biscuits. But no potatoes. Never touch baked potatoes. Now there’s a secret never to be told. Mr Tattyman hates his baked potatoes!”

  Joe told him then all there was to tell about the promise he’d made to Marion. It had been one of the very last times Marion had recognised him. Joe was reading aloud to her, Gone with the Wind, her favourite book, when she interrupted, looking him straight in the eye. “Don’t you let them do it, Joe,” she whispered. “Promise you won’t let them do it. Promise.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Joe had told her, but that wasn’t good enough.

  She became quite agitated. “No, they mustn’t close it. Miss Carter, my friends, what would happen to all my friends? You must promise.” So he had, and there was no going back on it now.

  Of course everyone at Fairlawns had talked about little else for months, ever since the article first appeared in the local newspaper. Many of the old people had become very anxious and upset. Miss Carter, the oldest of them at ninety-six and wheelchair bound, was usually full of the joys of life. But she had hardly spoken a word since the threatened closure was announced. She simply sat, staring into space, lost in deep sadness.

  The Council was closing the nursing home down because it was too small – only a dozen beds – and the building was too old and dilapidated. It just wasn’t “cost effective”. That it was a much loved home to twelve old people, a place where they belonged, where they were wonderfully cared for, and where all their friends were, appeared to be of little concern to the Council. Fairlawns would close and everyone would be dispersed to other nursing homes, if others could be found, or if not, then to hospital. There had been thousands of letters of protest sent to the Council, and even to the Prime Minister. Deidre Besant, their member of Parliament, had pleaded to have Fairlawns kept open, in the House of Commons, on television and radio. She had done her best. Relatives, Joe among them, had picketed local councillors. Doctors and nurses were unanimous in their support: to close a nursing home, that was so well run, and when the need for such places was growing all the time, would be a disaster, they said. Newspaper reporters and photographers had been in and out of Fairlawns for months, interviewing staff and patients. The whole community was against closing it down. Yet nothing and no one seemed to be able to prevent it from happening.

  Joe handed Paddywack the last of the digestive biscuits. “I had my promise to keep,” he went on. “So if there was a protest, I was there. I organised the support group, collected signatures. Almost everyone who bought a potato off the Tattyvan signed the petition. I got over 15,000 signatures. Towards the end, when Marion was drifting in and out of consciousness, I’d tell her how well it was all going, how many more signatures we’d got, how the Council would have to listen now. I really hope she heard me, but if I’m honest with myself, I’m not sure she did. Sometimes I think it was a good thing she died when she did, because nothing came of any of it. A week after she died the Council announced the date they were closing Fairlawns down. And that’s when I really got angry, when I decided to do it, to pack up the Tattyvan for good and to make one last effort, to protest full-time, until they changed their minds. And by now it wasn’t just because of the promise. Like I said, I was angry. That place, those people, they kept Marion happy. The old people were like brothers and sisters to her, like a family, Miss Carter in particular. And the staff did all they could for her, I reckon I owed them. So I’ve got my tent, my sleeping bag, my little stove, and tomorrow is the big day, the day it all begins.”

  He emptied the biscuit crumbs into his cupped hand, and let Paddywack lick them off. “Don’t you worry,
old son, we’ll have plenty of biscuits in the tent, and plenty of bacon butties too. I want to be out there at Fairlawns by first light tomorrow morning. We’ll pitch our tent, put up our banner and stay there for as long as it takes.”

  The next morning, drivers on their way to work in town saw a bright orange tent pitched on the wide grass verge by the road in front of the Fairlawns Nursing Home. Beside it sat an old man in a tatty-looking duffle coat and a blue and white striped bobble hat, and right next to him stood a greyhound almost the same golden colour as the leaves on the tree above them. Behind them and above them, strung out between the branches hung a huge banner. Painted across it in multi-coloured letters was: SITTING HERE TILL FAIRLAWNS IS SAVED! HOOT TO SAVE FAIRLAWNS!

  Hardly a driver passed by without hooting that morning. It was a great and hopeful start, and it got better. By lunchtime every single one of the old people from Fairlawns had made their way down the drive at one time or another, to the grass verge to see them, even Miss Carter in her motorised wheelchair. Suddenly she seemed to be her old self again. It was a sunny autumn day, a bit blustery with leaves flying, but still warm enough for each of them to stay there with Joe and Paddywack for a few minutes. They’d wave in delight as the cars and lorries drove by, hooting and honking their support. The matron, Mrs Bellamy, was there most of the time, making sure that none of the old people stayed out there too long or got too cold. It was Mrs Bellamy’s idea to invite Paddywack back into the house.

  “Look at him, Joe, he’s shivering from head to tail,” she said. “We’ll have him inside for a while and get him out of this wind.”

  Paddywack found himself being led up to the house and into the warmth of the sitting room where he at once became the centre of attention. He lay down in front of the fire and toasted himself, until all his shivers were gone. Whenever the old people called him over he would go and stand there beside them, and be stroked and adored for a while. For food he simply followed his nose to the kitchen and waited there until someone noticed him and fed him, which sooner or later they always did. And sometimes, when he heard the front door open, he’d nip out and trot down the drive to be with Joe again. He’d sit down right against Joe’s leg, resting his head on his knee. He could doze easily that way, and as Joe already knew, Paddywack loved dozing even more than eating.