Stories

Michael Morpurgo

Listen to Michael Morpurgo's story here, or read it below.

When I was young, very young, about 7 years old, I was sent away to boarding school. I got used to it after a while – I had to. But to begin with, I didn’t like it at all – the horrible food I had to finish, the freezing dormitories, the cross-country runs,  the threat of detentions and punishments that hung over me all the time. Worst of all though,  the masters  (we didn’t call them teachers) kept telling me I was useless, at just about everything, my spelling, my writing, my maths.  I  woke up every morning, dreading the day ahead, except for one day every term, the day I went home for the holidays.  Even the food tasted good that day!

It was on the train journey back home from school for the summer holidays of 1951 – I’d have been about 8 at the time – that I discovered for the first time that I was good at something.  It was a train journey that changed my life, and as a result of which I’ve been  doing that same something ever since.  I’ll tell you all about it, shall I?

I remember it as if it was yesterday.  All of us in our school uniforms of green red and white striped blazers and caps, and grey shorts, piled into the Southdown coach outside the school. The school looked more like Hogwarts,  than Hogwarts does, a great looming castle of a place, built of gloomy grey stone, with pointed roofs like witches hats, and towering chimneys  from where  the rooks  and crows cawed and croaked at us,  like evil spirits.  There might not have been bars on the place, but to me, and to many of us,  it was a prison all the same.  And now we were being let out.  We were leaving, cheering our heads off as the coach drove us through the  iron gates, and out onto the road to East Grinstead to catch the train to London, where our Mums would be waiting for us.  We were off home for eight long weeks. So this was just about the best day of our young lives.

Luckily, we found an empty carriage. We bagged our seats – about ten of us there were – and I managed to get the one by the window, because I got there first. We slid the compartment door shut – you could do that in those days – and we were alone, all of us reveling in our newfound freedom.  Even the master who patrolled the corridor outside all the way to London, held little fear for us now.

The carriage was full of boisterous banter, lots of jollification and japes and jokes, as London came closer with every station we passed.  Then came a time, when, for some reason or other, we fell quite silent, as if we were all taking a deep breath before we changed our skins and became our other selves, our home selves, our real selves. And maybe we were all savouring the glowing  time of happiness that lay ahead of us, like a beach of golden sand that stretches into the distance with no end in sight.  But the trouble was that we all of us knew there would be an end, and that in only a few weeks time we’d all be back on this same train and going the other way.  

I know that’s just what I was thinking, when  someone broke the silence and started boasting about where he was going on his ‘hols’ – I think it was Bennett. (We called one another by our surnames for some strange reason, or nick names sometimes.)

“I’m going Spai..ee..ain!” he chanted.  “I’m going by pla..ee..ane!   Flying to Gibraltar, and my uncle Tobias is coming to meet us in his Bentley.”

“So what?”  Gilbert sneered.  “I’m going to France, and I’m going on a canal, on a barge, and we’ll all have bikes, and Dad says we can get off whenever we like and cycle wherever we want.”

“Big deal,” Miller piped up perkily – he was horrible when he was perky. “Who wants to go to rotten old France, or stupid smelly old Spain? I am going straight from the station  to the airport, and we are flying in a plane to Hong Kong, cos that’s where we live.  So yah boo sucks to you!” Then he turned on me.  “So what are you doing then, Pongo?”

All this  yah boo talk was getting under my skin anyway, but now I was really peeved.  This was a personal challenge.  The trouble was that I knew we weren’t going away on holiday  at all that summer, because  we couldn’t afford it – that’s what Mum had told me.  And until that moment, I hadn’t minded, not that much.  Now I did mind though.  I minded a lot. I think that must have been why I said what I said.  I didn’t think about it. It was as if the words were coming out without me speaking them.

“Well,” I said, glancing down at my Timex watch. “Well, I really hope this train gets in on time – 3 o’clock, wasn’t it?  It takes about an hour to get home on the Underground. We’ve got to get home by half past four at the latest.”

“Why half past four?” Miller asked me.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?”  I said, my voice as flat as a pancake, my face as straight as a cricket bat. “Didn’t I tell you?” They were all looking at me expectantly.

“No,” Bennett said. “What are you doing at half past four?  Having a nice cup of tea?  Something super exciting like that, is it?”

“You almost guessed it, in a way” I went on.  “The thing is that we can’t be late home because the Queen’s coming for tea.”

You should have seen their faces.  For long moments they just gaped at me, dumbstruck.  I couldn’t believe it!  They honestly believed me, they really did!  Only when I let myself break into a smile did they get it.  They all jumped on me then, and pummeled  and tickled me half to death. I loved every moment of it, and I’ve loved thinking about it ever since.  Because I discovered something in the train carriage that day. I wasn’t useless at everything. I could tell a story, and what’s more I could make people believe it, and when they believed it, they enjoyed it.   And I discovered I loved doing it too, loved telling stories.  I still do.  I’ve been doing it all my life ever since.   

A Postscript to my story.  (As true as the story itself.)

Sixty or so years later there was a party in London to launch a book I had helped put together, along with that great illustrator Quentin Blake.  In the book, lots of famous people had chosen a favourite story from their childhood.  Amongst them was the film star, Johnny Depp (you know,  ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’,  ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’).  Quite a few people had come along, hoping he might be there. I knew that.   As I was giving my speech of welcome, it was as if I was back in that railway carriage.  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” I said, “I’m so sorry we haven’t got anyone seriously starry and famous here tonight. You’ll just have to make do with a few old writers like me, and a few old illustrators like Quentin Blake.  I would like to thank all the writers for their stories and all the illustrators…. “ I paused. Wide-eyed with surprise and amazement, I gaped at the open door behind them. “Oh, my goodness!” I breathed.  “I don’t believe it!  It’s Johnny Depp!”

I swear to you, everyone in that room turned and looked, and I mean, everyone.  As some people say who are a lot younger than me, “That was so fun.”  That’s why I tell stories.  Because it’s so fun.

by Michael Morpurgo

Paul Auster

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When A. was a young woman in San Francisco and just starting out in life, she went through a desperate period in which she almost lost her mind. In the space of just a few weeks, she was fired from her job, one of her best friends was murdered when thieves broke into her apartment at night and A.'s beloved cat became seriously ill. I don't know the exact nature of the illness, but it was apparently life threatening, and when A. took the cat to the vet, he told her that the cat would die within a month unless a certain operation was performed. She asked him how much the operation would cost. He toted up the various charges for her and the amount came to $327. A. didn't have that kind of money. Her bank account was down to almost zero, and for the next several days she walked around in a state of extreme distress, alternately thinking about her dead friend and the impossible sum needed to prevent her cat from dying: $327.

One day she was driving through the mission and came to a stop at a red light. Her body was there, but her thoughts were somewhere else, and in the gap between them, in that small space that no one has fully explored but where we all sometimes live, she heard the voice of her murdered friend. "Don't worry," the voice said. "Don't worry. Things will get better soon." The light turned green, but A. was still under the spell of this auditory hallucination, and she did not move. A moment later, a car rammed into her from behind, breaking one of the tail-lights and crumpling the fender. The man who was driving that car shut off his engine, climbed out of the car, and walked over to A.. He apologized for doing such a stupid thing. No, A. said, it was my fault. The light turned green, and I didn't go. But the man insisted that he was the one to blame. When he learned that A. didn't have collision insurance (she was too poor for luxuries like that), he offered to pay for any damages that had been done to her car. "Get an estimate on what it will cost," he said, "and send me the bill. My insurance company will take care of it." A. continued to protest, telling the man that he wasn't responsible for the accident, but he wouldn't take no for an answer, and finally she gave in.

She took the car to a garage and asked the mechanic to assess the costs of repairing the fender and tail-light. When she returned several hours later, he handed her a written estimate. The amount came to exactly $327.

by Paul Auster