Times of War Collection. Michael Morpurgo

cottage and Grandma Wolf moved out. We were liberated, and all was right with the world again. For a while at least.

      Both of them being older than me, Molly by two years, Charlie by three, they always ran faster than I did. I seem to have spent much of my life watching them racing ahead of me, leaping the high meadow grass, Molly’s plaits whirling about her head, their laughter mingling. When they got too far ahead I sometimes felt they wanted to be without me. I would whine at them then to let them know I was feeling all miserable and abandoned, and they’d wait for me to catch up. Best of all Molly would sometimes come running back and take my hand.

      When we weren’t poaching the Colonel’s fish or scrumping his apples — more than anything we all loved the danger of it, I think — we would be roaming wild in the countryside. Molly could shin up a tree like a cat, faster than either of us. Sometimes we’d go down to the river bank and watch the kingfishers flash by, or we’d go swimming in Okement Pool hung all around by willows, where the water was dark and deep and mysterious, and where no one ever came.

      I remember the day Molly dared Charlie to take off all his clothes, and to my amazement he did. Then she did, and they ran shrieking and bare-bottomed into the water. When they called me in after them, I wouldn’t do it, not in front of Molly. So I sat and sulked on the bank and watched them splashing and giggling, and all the while I was wishing I had the courage to do what Charlie had done, wishing I was with them. Molly got dressed afterwards behind a bush and told us not to watch. But we did. That was the first time I ever saw a girl with no clothes on. She was very thin and white, and she wrung her plaits out like a wet cloth.

      It was several days before they managed to entice me in. Molly stood waist-deep in the river and put her hands over her eyes. “Come on, Tommo,” she cried. “I won’t watch. Promise.” And not wanting to be left out yet again, I stripped off and made a dash for the river, covering myself as I went just in case Molly was watching through her fingers. After I’d done it that first time, it never seemed to bother me again.

      Sometimes when we tired of all the frolicking we’d lie and talk in the shallows, letting the river ripple over us. How we talked. Molly told us once that she wanted to die right there and then, that she never wanted tomorrow to come because no tomorrow could ever be as good as today. “I know,” she said, and she sat up in the river then and collected a handful of small pebbles. “I’m going to tell our future. I’ve seen the gypsies do it.” She shook the pebbles around in her cupped hands, closed her eyes and then scattered them out on to the muddy shore. Kneeling over them she spoke very seriously and slowly as if she were reading them. “They say we’ll always be together, the three of us, for ever and ever. They say that as long as we stick together we’ll be lucky and happy.” Then she smiled at us. “And the stones never lie,” she said. “So you’re stuck with me.”

      For a year or two Molly’s stones proved right. But then Molly got ill. She wasn’t at school one day. It was the scarlet fever, Mr Munnings told us, and very serious. Charlie and I went up to her cottage that evening after tea with some sweetpeas Mother had picked for her — because they smell sweeter than any flower she knew, she said. We knew we wouldn’t be allowed in to see her because scarlet fever was very catching, but Molly’s mother did not look at all pleased to see us. She always looked grey and grim, but that day she was angry as well. She took the flowers with scarcely a glance at them, and told us it would be better if we didn’t come again. Then Molly’s father appeared from behind her, looking gruff and unkempt, and told us to be off, that we were disturbing Molly’s sleep. As I walked away, all I could think of was how unhappy Molly must be living in that dingy little cottage with a mother and father like that, and how trees fall on the wrong fathers. We stopped at the end of the path and looked up at Molly’s window, hoping she would come and wave at us. When she didn’t we knew she must be really ill.

      Charlie and I never said our prayers at all any more, not since Sunday school, but we did now. Kneeling side by side with Big Joe we prayed each night that Molly would not die. Joe sang Oranges and Lemons and we said Amen afterwards. We had our fingers crossed too, just for good measure.

       TEN TO MIDNIGHT

      I‘m not sure I ever really believed in God, even in Sunday school. In church I’d gaze up at Jesus hanging on the cross in the stained-glass window, and feel sorry for him because I could see how cruel it was and how much it must be hurting him. I knew he was a good and kind man. But I never really understood why God, who was supposed to be his father, and almighty and powerful, would let them do that to him, would let him suffer so much. I believed then, as I believe now, that crossed fingers and Molly’s stones are every bit as reliable or unreliable as praying to God. I shouldn’t think like that because if there’s no God, then there can be no heaven. Tonight I want very much to believe there’s a heaven, that, as Father said, there is a new life after death, that death is not a full stop, and that we will all see one another again.

      It was while Molly was ill in bed with the scarlet fever that Charlie and I discovered that although in one way Molly’s stones had let us down, in another way they had indeed spoken the truth: with her, with the three of us together, we were lucky, and without her we weren’t. Up until now, whenever the three of us had gone out together poaching the Colonel’s fish, we had never been caught. We’d had a few close shaves with old Lambert and his dog, but our lookout system had always worked. Somehow we’d always heard them coming and managed to make ourselves scarce. But the very first time Charlie and I went out poaching without Molly, things went wrong, badly wrong, and it was my fault.

      We had chosen a perfect poaching night, not a breath of wind so we could hear anyone coming. With Molly beside me on lookout I’d never felt sleepy, and we’d always heard old Lambert and his dog in plenty of time for Charlie to get out of the river, for us all to make good our escape. But on this particular night my concentration failed me. I’d made myself comfortable, probably too comfortable, in our usual place by the bridge with Charlie netting downstream. But after sitting there for a while I just fell asleep. I don’t drop off all that easily, but when I do sleep I sleep deeply.

      The first I knew of anything was a dog snuffling at my neck. Then he was barking in my face, and old Lambert was dragging me to my feet. And there was Charlie way out in the middle of the moonlit river hauling at the nets.

      “Peaceful boys! You young rascals,” Lambert growled. “Caught you red-handed. You’re for it now, make no mistake.”

      Charlie could have left me there. He could have made a run for it and got clean away, but Charlie’s not like that. He never has been.

      At the point of a shotgun Lambert marched us back along the river and up to the Big House, his dog snarling at our heels from time to time just to remind us he was still there, and that he’d eat us alive if we made a run for it. Lambert locked us in the stables and left us. We waited in the darkness, the horses shifting and munching and snorting around us. All too soon we saw the approaching light of a lamp, and heard footsteps and voices. Then the Colonel was there in his slippers and his dressing gown, and he had Grandma Wolf with him in her nightcap looking every bit as fierce as Lamberts dog.

      The Colonel looked from one to the other of us, shaking his head in disgust. But Grandma Wolf had the first word. “I’ve never in all my life been so ashamed,” she said. “My own family. You’re nothing but a downright disgrace. And after all the Colonel’s done for us. Common thieves, that’s what you are. Nothing but common thieves.”

      When she’d finished it was the Colonel’s turn. “Only one way to deal with young ruffians like you,” he said. “I could have you up before the magistrate, but since I’m the magistrate anyway there’s no need to go to all that trouble, is there? I’ll sentence you right now. You will come up here tomorrow morning at ten o’clock sharp, and I’ll give each of you the hiding you so richly deserve. Then you can stay and clean out the hunt kennels till I say you can go. That should teach you not to come poaching on my land.”

      When we got home we had to tell Mother everything we’d done, everything the Colonel had said. Charlie did most of the talking.