The Wreck of the Zanzibar (6 page)

We're staying. Everyone's staying. Billy's staying. He's said so, he promised. He's crossed his heart and hoped to die. He's been all over the world – America, Ireland, France, Spain, Africa even. Imagine that, Africa. I asked about Joseph Hannibal. It seems he didn't quite turn out as Billy had expected.
He drank a lot. He borrowed Billy's money and never gave it back. And when Billy asked for it, he threatened him. So Billy left the
General Lee
in New York and became a cabin-boy on the
Zanzibar.
It was the
Zanzibar
that had taken him all over the world.

Billy says there are beautiful places in the world,
wonders you wouldn't believe unless you saw them with your own eyes, but that there's nowhere else in the world quite like Scilly, nowhere like home. I told him I knew that already, and Father said there's some things you've got to find out for yourself, and Billy and he smiled at each other.

I'M MILKING THE
ZANZIBAR
COWS, AND WITH Billy, too. Three of the six are in milk and we think the others may be in calf – let's hope! Everyone had most of what they want off the wreck. There's been some grumbles, of course, but it's been fair shares. We've got the cows because we're the only ones who know how to handle them – we got some corn, too – everyone did. We've rebuilt the cowshed just as it was. Granny May has enough wood for her roof. There's timber stacked up in gardens all over the island. There's boats being mended, roofs going on. Everyone, everywhere, is hammering and sawing. Bryher is alive again.

Granny May will probably be with us until the spring, till her house is ready. She's the same now as she ever was, scuttling about the place and muttering to herself. Sometimes I think she is the ‘mad old stick' everyone says she is. She keeps telling me it wasn't God that brought the wreck that brought Billy back to us, it was the turtle. She rambles on and on about how there's no such thing as a miracle. If something happens, then something has made it happen. Law of nature, she says. We saved the turtle and so the turtle saved us. It's that simple. You get what you deserve in this world, she says. I don't know that she's right.

I've told Billy all about the turtle. He says if he'd found it, he'd have eaten it, but he wouldn't have. He's just saying that. We talk and we talk. We've hardly stopped talking since he came back. I've heard his stories over and over, but I want to hear them again and again. I know them so well, it's as if I was with him all the time he was away, as if I've been to America and Africa, as if I've seen for myself the great cities, the deserts that go on forever and icebergs and mountains that reach up and touch the sky.

The crew of the
Zanzibar
left from the quay this
evening. We were there to wave them off. Everyone hugged everyone. They were all so happy to be alive and so grateful to us for saving them.

Since he's been back, Billy hasn't had a cross word with Father, and Mother is my mother again.

IT SEEMS GRANNY MAY MIGHT HAVE BEEN right after all. I was with Billy cleaning out the cowshed after church when he called me outside. Everyone seemed to be running down towards Green Bay and there was a crowd gathered down on the beach. So we left everything and ran. We met Mother and Granny May coming out of the house.

‘There's been a dead turtle washed up,' said Mother. Granny May looked at me, her eyes full of tears. We had to push through the crowd. People were laughing, and I hated them for that. He was covered in sand and seaweed and they were trying to roll him over, but he was too heavy, even for them.
Then I looked again. It was a turtle all right, but it was not our turtle. It wasn't any turtle at all. It was painted bright green with yellow eyes and it looked as if it had been carved out of wood. It was the figurehead off a ship.

Billy crouched down beside it, and brushed the sand off its face.

‘That's off the
Zanzibar
,' he said.

Granny May was laughing through her tears. She took my hand and squeezed it.

‘Now do you believe me?' she said, and she didn't need an answer.

‘If it's off Billy's ship,' she went on, ‘then it belongs to Billy, doesn't it?' No one argued with her.

‘We'll call him Zanzibar and he can live in the garden. Let's get him home.' So we heaved him up on to a cart and trundled him home. All afternoon we scrubbed. A lot of his paint had come off in the sea. He's a little bigger than our turtle was but his face is just the same, wizened, wrinkled and wise like a two hundred year old man. And he smiles just the same too – gently.

I'm looking out of my window as I write this. He looks as if he's trying to eat the grass. He won't, of
course. He'll only eat jellyfish. Zanzibar is a good name for him, the right name, I think.

(On the last page, she had written in ink, in the wobbly handwriting of an old lady:)

P.S. One Last Thing

I'm not leaving Zanzibar to anyone. I'm leaving him to everyone. So I want him put out on the Green so all the children of Bryher can sit on him whenever they like. They can ride him wherever they like. He can be a horse, a dragon, a dolphin, an elephant or even a leatherback turtle.

As you know, your Great-uncle Billy lived a good long life. When he died, I didn't know how I'd manage without him. But I did, because I had to. Anyway, we're together again now.

L.P. 1995

I SAT THERE ON THE BED FOR SOME MOMENTS, looking at the last of Great-aunt Laura's drawings – of Zanzibar on the Green gazing out to sea. Sitting astride him is a small girl. The wind is in her hair and she's laughing out of sheer joy.

From outside the window I heard peals of laughter. I leaned out. There must have been half a dozen little nieces and nephews down in the garden and clambering all over Zanzibar. The smallest of them, Catherine it was – my youngest niece, was offering Zanzibar some grass and stroking his head between his eyes.

‘Come on, Marzipan,' she was saying, ‘you'll like it.'

‘He won't eat it,' I called down. ‘He only eats jellyfish.' She looked up at me, squinting into the sun.

‘How do you know?' she asked.

‘If you let me sit on him,' I said, ‘I'll tell you. I'll tell you where Zanzibar came from, how he got here, everything.'

‘All right,' she said.

So, sitting on Zanzibar in the evening sun, I read them Great-aunt Laura's diary from beginning to end. By the time I'd finished, the entire family was gathered around Zanzibar and listening.

I closed the book. ‘That's it,' I said. No one spoke for some time.

It was Catherine's idea that we should move Zanzibar right away. So we fetched Great-aunt Laura's rickety cart out of her shed, loaded up Zanzibar and hauled him along the rutty track to the Green. I knew from that last drawing in the diary exactly where she wanted him put. And that's where we left him, gazing out to sea.

When I looked back there were gulls circling above him. Some had landed on his back, and one on his head. Catherine was running at them, waving her hands and shouting. ‘Shoo!' she cried. ‘Shoo!' They
flew off, protesting; and Catherine caught us up.

‘Anyway, it doesn't matter, does it?' she said. ‘They can't eat him, can they? Marzipan's made of wood, isn't he?'

‘Zanzibar,' I said. ‘He's called Zanzibar.'

‘That's what I said,' she replied, and skipped off after the others.

The magic of King Arthur continues...

THE SLEEPING SWORD

I felt all around me. On every side there were earth walls. In a panic, I groped above me for the hole I must have fallen through. I tried again and again to haul myself up, but the soil roof kept giving way and falling in on me. I must have been aware of the rumble of the tractor, but only now did I realise that it was too close and coming closer, that it was heading straight for me.

Bun Bendle stumbles one day into an underground tomb containing a shield and a beautiful, ancient sword. As he touches the hilt, his whole body is gripped by an incredible, centuries-old power. It is a power that will change Bun's life for ever.

MICHAEL MORPURGO
The master storyteller

For more great books see:

www.michaelmorpurgo.org
www.egmont.co.uk