An Eagle in the Snow. Michael Morpurgo

Grandpa took me off to his allotment, just to find out if it was all right, he said. But I knew really that it was because Ma didn’t want me there around all those crying people. Mrs McIntyre was sitting on the pavement, outside her shop, her stockings in tatters, her legs bleeding. She was staring into space, fingering her rosary beads, her lips moving in silent prayer. Mr McIntyre was there somewhere but no one could find him.

      It wasn’t far from the allotment to the field where Grandpa kept Big Black Jack, our old carthorse, and Grandpa’s soul-mate since Grandma died – mine too, come to that. Big Black Jack was the horse Grandpa worked with and talked to all day and every day, as they delivered coal all around the city, and I’d go with him sometimes, after school and at weekends. I couldn’t carry the sacks of coal – they were too heavy. My job was to fold the empty sacks for Grandpa, and pile them neatly in the back of the cart, and to make sure Big Black Jack always had corn in his sack, and water enough to drink. So Big Black Jack and me, we were best mates.

      At first, everything seemed just as it should be: the rickety old shed still standing, and the water bucket by the door full of water, the hay net hanging limp and empty. But there was no sign of Big Black Jack.

      Then we saw the smashed fence. He’d got free – not surprising, with all that bombing. “He’s took off somewhere,” Grandpa said. “He’ll be fine. That horse can look after hisself. He’ll be fine. He’s done it before. He’ll be back. He’ll find his way home, always does.”

      But I knew even as he was saying it that he was just telling himself, hoping it was true, but fearing the worst.

      

      It was only moments later that we found Big Black Jack lying there, stretched out on the grass at the edge of the woods. And through the trees we saw the crater now where a bomb had fallen. The trees around had been blasted, burnt, and stunted. Big Black Jack lay so still. There didn’t seem to be a mark on him. I looked into his wide-open eyes. Grandpa was kneeling by his great head, feeling his neck. “Cold,” he said. “He’s cold. Poor old boy. Poor old boy.” He cried silently, his whole body shaking.

      I didn’t cry then, but I nearly was now, in the train, as I remembered it all again, the kindness in his eye, how I longed for him to breathe, not to be so still. I felt the tears welling up inside me.

      “You all right, son?” said the stranger opposite, leaning forward. Ma answered for me again, and I was relieved she did this time, for there were tears filling my mouth too, and I couldn’t have spoken even if I’d wanted to.

      “We was bombed out,” Ma explained to him. “Bit upset he is.”

      “And he’s busted his arm too,” the man said. “How did that happen?”

      “Football,” Ma told him. “He’s mad on his football, aren’t you, Barney?”

      I nodded. It was all I could do.

      “Lost the house,” Ma went on. “On Mulberry Road it was. Lost just about everything. Then, so did lots of others I s’pose. But we got lucky. Still here, aren’t we?” She put her hand on mine. “Busted arm in’t much, when you think … So, mustn’t grumble, must we? No point, is there? Just thank our lucky stars. We’re off to stay with my sister down in Cornwall, by the sea, aren’t we, Barney? Mevagissey. Lovely down there. No bombs there neither. Just sea and sand and sunshine – and lots of fish. We like fish and chips, don’t we, Barney? And we like Aunty Mavis, don’t we?”

      I did, in a way. But I still couldn’t speak.

      Ma stopped talking for a while, and we sat there, the train rocking and rattling, the smoke flying past the window. The rhythm was changing, faster, faster. Dee dum, dee dum, dee dummidy dum.

      “They hit the cathedral an all, y’know,” Ma said. “Hardly nothing left of it. Lovely old place too. Beautiful that spire, see it for miles around. What they want to go and do that for? That’s wicked, that is. Wicked.”

      “It is,” said the stranger. “And I know Mulberry Road as it happens. I grew up there. In a manner of speaking. I seen what they done to it. I was there afterwards, after the raid, pulling folk out. Civil Defence, Air-raid Warden. That’s what I do,” the stranger went on. He seemed to be talking to himself now, thinking out loud, remembering. “Civil Defence, fire watching, fire fighting. But you can’t fight a fire-storm. Inferno it was. I was there. So I didn’t do much good, did I?”

      That was the moment I realised where I had seen the stranger before. He was the air-raid warden I had seen up on the rubble, who had carried me down. He looked different out of uniform, without his tin hat. But it was him. I was sure of it. He was looking hard at me then, frowning, almost as if he had recognised me at the same moment.

      “’Spect you did your best,” Ma said, oblivious, busying herself with her knitting. “All anyone can do, isn’t it? Barney’s pa, he’s away, overseas, in the army. In the Royal Engineers. He’s doing his best. Like his grandpa too. He’s staying behind in Coventry, says he’s going to carry on like before. Coalman, he is, family business. Houses got to be kept warm, he says. Stoves got to be lit, he says. Can’t let down his customers. And I says to him: “There aren’t hardly any houses left.” And he says: “Then we got to build them up again, haven’t we?” So he’s staying, doing his best, doing what’s right, that’s what he thinks. And that’s what I think too. No one can ask for more. Just do what you think is right, and you can’t go far wrong. You just got to do your best. S’what I tell Barney, don’t I, dear?”

      “Yes, Ma,” I said, finding my voice again. And it was true, she was always telling me that. The teachers at school told me much the same thing, just about every day, in fact.

      “But sometimes,” said the man, speaking slowly and thoughtfully, “the problem is that your best is not enough. Sometimes, what seems right at the time, turns out to be wrong.” He sat back in his seat then as if he’d had enough of all this talking. Ma obviously hadn’t recognised him. I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t, not with him there. He turned away to look out of the window, and for a long time none of us spoke.

      I love trains, everything about them, the hissing and the puffing, the rhythm and the rattle and the rocking, the whistling and the whooping, the roar as you burst into a tunnel, into the deep thunderous blackness, and then suddenly, with no warning, you’re out again into the bright light of day, the horses galloping off over the fields, the sheep and crows scattering. I love stations too, the bustle of them, the slamming of doors, the guard in his peaked cap, flag waving, and the engine breathing, waiting for the whistle. Then, the whistle at last, and the chuff, chuff, chuffing.

      I’d told Dad the last time he was home on leave that I had made up my mind to be a train driver when I grew up. Dad loved tinkering with engines – generators, motorcycles, cars – he could fix anything. So he was pleased I was going to be a train driver, I could tell. He told me the steam engine was just about the most beautiful machine man ever created. Just being in the train that morning was a comfort to me. I may not have been able to put out of my mind the night of terror down in the shelter, nor the dreadful sights we had witnessed the next day – Mrs McIntyre sitting there on the pavement with her rosary beads, her home and her life in ruins – our house reduced to rubble, and Grandpa kneeling over Big Black Jack. But the rhythm and rocking of the train soothed me somehow, and made me sleepy too.

      Beside me, Ma had stopped talking altogether