The War of Jenkins' Ear by Morpurgo Michael

Author:Morpurgo Michael [Michael, Morpurgo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780311500
Published: 2012-03-05T07:00:00+00:00

Toby loved to lean out of the carriage window and smell the smoke and feel the speed, but just outside East Croydon he got a smut in his eye and spent the rest of the journey trying to get it out. When his mother met him at Victoria she thought he had been crying. She comforted him on the platform, wiping his face with a handkerchief and telling him that he wasn’t to be upset, that Gran hadn’t suffered. She’d died in her chair listening to the radio, Desert Island Discs, her favourite. And we’ve all got to die sometime. She had a good long life. And then she cried herself and hugged Toby close. Toby breathed in the smell of her and closed his eyes. He was home. He didn’t care about the funeral or about Gran. He was home for only a short time, but even a few hours away from school was better than nothing at all. Tonight he’d be in his own bed. For one day at least there’d be no bells, no lining-up, no detentions, no tests. He would make the best of it.

Gran was buried that afternoon in the graveyard of St Thomas’ Church, just down the end of the road. It was raining hard and the noise of the rain on the umbrellas made it difficult to hear what the vicar was saying at the graveside. Toby couldn’t help thinking of Gran inside the coffin. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help himself. ‘Dust to dust,’ the vicar raised his voice as the rain drummed on the coffin. Toby thought of Christopher. He’d ask him when he got back. He’d know the answer, he knew the answer to everything. If, like the vicar had said, we are dust to start with and we are dust afterwards, then where’s the point in living? If Gran had come from heaven and now she’s gone back there, then why does God bother to make us live on the earth at all? There was no sense in it, no sense at all.

Toby sat back in the sleek black limousine afterwards and stretched his legs. His father sat beside him in his heavy black rain-spattered coat, his shoes muddy and wet from the graveside. He kept blowing his nose and looking out of the window. No one spoke. You could hardly hear the engine. The chauffeur sat bolt upright behind the glass partition, so erect that Toby wondered if he had a stiff neck.

The family gathered back at the house for tea and sandwiches and Toby found himself playing waiter to all his uncles and aunts and cousins. Charley was about the only one not dressed in black. She scooted around the floor on her bottom, screeching until she found someone to play with her and then she quietened for a bit. If it hadn’t been for her it would have been a grim affair. It was Charley who got everyone laughing, Charley who took everyone’s mind off the empty chair in the corner.

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