The Wreck of the Zanzibar by Michael Morpurgo

Author:Michael Morpurgo
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Egmont
Published: 2011-04-27T16:00:00+00:00

OCTOBER 25TH

I LOVE THE SMELL OF PAINT IN THE SUNSHINE. Today we painted the gig outside the boathouse – Father and me together – and he began talking about Billy again. He’s been talking more about him lately. I wish he wouldn’t because he only ends up tormenting himself. Always the same impossible questions I can’t answer: Why? Why did he go off like that? Where’s he gone? Why doesn’t he come home?

I just wish I had the courage to tell him, and to tell him straight: ‘Because you would keep shouting at him, because he was sick of milking cows day in day out, sick of slaving on the farm every hour of every day.’ But he wouldn’t understand and it wouldn’t do any good anyway. It wouldn’t bring Billy back, would it?

We were painting all day. Mother and Granny May brought us out some bread and water and I sat down and admired the gig, sleek in the sun, a shining gleaming jet black. No one spoke.

When no one talks it means we’re all thinking of Billy or of how long we can last out here on Bryher with the cows gone and no money coming in. When Granny May looks at me and smiles, I know she is thinking of our turtle.

I was looking out to sea today and I was thinking: they’re out there, Billy and our turtle, both of them. Maybe one day our turtle will swim right underneath Billy’s ship. They’ll meet in mid-ocean and never know it. Maybe.

We finished painting the gig by sunset. A cold wind was getting up and my hands were numb. Everyone come down to the boathouse to look. The chief said how fine she looked and how she’d move faster through the water now she was painted. And I said she’d go a lot faster still if I rowed in her. They all laughed, but I wasn’t joking. Father knew it. I caught his eye. He wasn’t angry. I really think he was proud of me, just for a moment.

Mother looks so grey these days, and thin. She’s always gazing out of the window. She’s looking for Billy – I know she is, she’s waiting for him. She and Father scarcely speak at all. Only Granny May talks and she talks more to herself than anyone else. I’m hungry. We’re all hungry.

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