Times of War Collection. Michael Morpurgo

      I go for him then, fists flailing, screaming at him, but I don’t manage to land a single punch. He hits me full in the face and sends me sprawling. I find myself suddenly sitting on the ground, wiping my bleeding nose and looking at the blood on the back of my hand. Then he puts the boot in, hard. I curl up in a ball like a hedgehog to protect myself, but it doesn’t seem to do me much good. He just goes on kicking me on my back, on my legs, anywhere he can. When he finally stops I wonder why.

      I look up to see Charlie grabbing him round the neck and pulling him to the ground. They’re rolling over and over, punching each other and swearing. The whole school has gathered round to watch now, egging them on. That’s when Mr Munnings comes running out of the school, roaring like a raging bull. He pulls them apart, takes them by their collars and drags them off inside the school. Luckily for me Mr Munnings never even notices me sitting there, bleeding. Charlie gets the cane, and so does Jimmy Parsons — six strokes each. So Charlie saves me twice that day. The rest of us stand there in the school yard in silence, listening to the strokes and counting them. Big Jimmy Parsons gets it first, and he keeps crying out: “Ow, sir! Ow, sir! Ow, sir!” But when it’s Charlie’s turn, all we hear are the whacks, and then the silences in between. I am so proud of him for that. I have the bravest brother in the world.

      Molly comes over and, taking me by the hand, leads me towards the pump. She soaks her handkerchief under it and dabs my nose and my hands and my knee — the blood seems to be everywhere. The water is wonderfully cold and soothing, and her hands are soft. She doesn’t say anything for a while. She’s dabbing me very gently, very carefully so as not to hurt me. Then all of a sudden she says: “I like Big Joe. He’s kind. I like people who are kind.”

      Molly likes Big Joe. Now I know for sure that I will love her till the day I die.

      After a while Charlie came out into the school yard hitching up his trousers and grinning in the sunshine. Everyone was crowding around him.

      “Did it hurt, Charlie?”

      “Was it on the back of the knees, Charlie, or on your bum?”

      Charlie never said a word to them. He just walked right through everyone, and came straight over to me and Molly. “He won’t do it again, Tommo,” he said. “I hit him where it hurts, in the goolies.” He lifted my chin and peered at my nose. “Are you all right, Tommo?”

      “Hurts a bit,” I told him.

      “So does my bum,” said Charlie.

      Molly laughed then, and so did I. So did Charlie, and so did the whole school.

      From that moment on Molly became one of us. It was as if she had suddenly joined our family and become our sister. When Molly came home with us that afternoon Big Joe gave her some flowers he’d picked, and Mother treated her like the daughter she’d never had. After that, Molly came home with us almost every afternoon. She seemed to want to be with us all the time. We didn’t discover the reason for this until a lot later. I remember Mother used to brush Molly’s hair. She loved doing it and we loved watching.

      Mother. I think of her so often. And when I think of her I think of high hedges and deep lanes and our walks down to the river together in the evenings. I think of meadowsweet and honeysuckle and vetch and foxgloves and red campion and dog roses. There wasn’t a wild flower or a butterfly she couldn’t name. I loved the sound of their names when she spoke them: red admiral, peacock, cabbage white, adonis blue. It’s her voice I’m hearing in my head now. I don’t know why, but I can hear her better than I can picture her. I suppose it was because of Big Joe that she was always talking, always explaining the world about us. She was his guide, his interpreter, his teacher.

      They wouldn’t have Big Joe at school. Mr Munnings said he was backward. He wasn’t backward at all. He was different, “special” Mother used to call him, but he was not backward. He needed help, that’s all, and Mother was his help. It was as if Big Joe was blind in some way. He could see perfectly well, but very often he didn’t seem to understand what he was seeing. And he wanted to understand so badly. So Mother would be forever telling him how and why things were as they were. And she would sing to him often, too, because it always made him happy and soothed him whenever he had one of his turns and became anxious or troubled. She’d sing to Charlie and me as well, more out of habit, I think. But we loved it, loved the sound of her voice. Her voice was the music of our childhood.

      After Father died the music stopped. There was a stillness and a quietness in Mother now, and a sadness about the house. I had my terrible secret, a secret I could scarcely ever put out of my mind. So in my guilt I kept more and more to myself. Even Big Joe hardly ever laughed. At meals the kitchen seemed especially empty without Father, without his bulk and his voice filling the room. His dirty work coat didn’t hang in the porch any more, and the smell of his pipe lingered only faintly now. He was gone and we were all quietly mourning him in our way.

      Mother still talked to Big Joe, but not as much as before. She had to talk to him, because she was the only one who truly understood the meaning of all the grunts and squawks Big Joe used for language. Charlie and I understood some of it, some of the time, but she seemed to understand all he wanted to say, sometimes even before he said it. There was a shadow hanging over her, Charlie and I could see that, and not only the shadow of Father’s death. We were sure there was something else she wouldn’t talk about, something she was hiding from us. We found out what it was only too soon.

      We were back home after school having our tea — Molly was there too — when there was a knock on the door. Mother seemed at once to know who it was. She took time to gather herself, smoothing down her apron and arranging her hair before she opened the door. It was the Colonel. “I wanted a word, Mrs Peaceful,” he said. “I think you know what I’ve come for.”

      Mother told us to finish our tea, closed the door and went out into the garden with him. Charlie and I left Molly and Big Joe at the table and dashed out of the back door. We hurdled the vegetables, ran along the hedge, crouched down behind the woodshed and listened. We were close enough to hear every word that was said.

      “It may seem a little indelicate to broach the subject so soon after your late husband’s sad and untimely death,” the Colonel was saying. He wasn’t looking at Mother as he spoke, but down at his top hat which he was smoothing with his sleeve. “But it’s a question of the cottage. Strictly speaking, of course, Mrs Peaceful, you have no right to live here any more. You know well enough I think that this is a tied cottage, tied to your late husband’s job on the estate. Now of course with him gone …”

      “I know what you’re saying. Colonel,” Mother said. “You want us out.”

      “Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that. It’s not that I want you out, Mrs Peaceful, not if we can come to some other arrangement.”

      “Arrangement? What arrangement?” Mother asked.

      “Well,” the Colonel went on, “as it happens there’s a position up at the house that might suit you. My wife’s lady’s maid has just given notice. As you know my wife is not a well woman. These days she spends most of her life in a wheelchair. She needs constant care and attention seven days a week.”

      “But I have my children,” Mother protested. “Who would look after my children?”

      It was a while before the Colonel spoke. “The two boys are old enough now to fend for themselves, I should have thought. And as for the other one, there is the lunatic asylum in Exeter. I‘m sure I could see to it that a place be found for—”

      Mother interrupted, her fury only barely suppressed, her voice cold but still calm. “I could never do that, Colonel. Never. But if I want to keep a roof over our heads, then I have to find some way I can come to work for you as your wife’s maid. That is what you’re telling me, isn’t it.”

      “I‘d say you understand the position perfectly, Mrs Peaceful. I couldn’t have put it better myself. I shall need your agreement within the week. Good day Mrs Peaceful. And once again my condolences.”

      We watched him go, leaving