Alone on a Wide Wide Sea. Michael Morpurgo

       “Only One Way Out”

      We could see it happening right in front of our eyes, every day, every night. And we didn’t do nearly enough to prevent it. There’s a lot in my life I regret, a lot to feel guilty about – too much. But I don’t think anything troubles me more than what happened to Wes Snarkey at Cooper’s Station. I still have dreams about it, and about him, all these years later. I should have seen it coming. I should have had the courage to stand beside him, but I didn’t. Nor did Marty, and nor did any of us, except Ida. At least Ida tried.

      It all went back, I’m sure, to that glorious day when Wes knocked Piggy Bacon down in the yard, then sat on him and clobbered him. Wes became our hero that day, but he also replaced Marty as Piggy’s favourite victim. He would bawl him out all the time, pick on him at every opportunity. Wes found himself chosen for the worst jobs, the ones we all dreaded, the dirtiest, the heaviest, the smelliest: cleaning out the latrine, digging ditches, carting stones. And Piggy was as clever about it as he was vicious. He knew how Wes loved to work near Big Black Jack in the stables. Everyone knew it. Wes had made no secret of his love for the horse, so Piggy deliberately saw to it that he was never anywhere near his paddock or the stable. And he made sure as well that Wes worked mainly on his own. He deliberately set out to isolate him from the rest of us.

      Hardly a day went by when Wes wasn’t hauled out in front of all of us at evening punishment parade. Sometimes Piggy would just bellow at him. Sometimes he would take the strap to him and give him a hiding. He’d always find some excuse, any excuse to punish him. We could all see Wes was getting it a lot harder then the rest of us. And Piggy was enjoying it too – I saw it in his face. When he whacked Wes it was always done with more venom, more violence. Thinking back, I’m ashamed to say there was even a sense in which I felt a little relieved because while Wes was on the receiving end, then at least I wasn’t.

      Wes grew in stature in our eyes with every whack of Piggy’s belt. He never once flinched, never once complained, and so far as we knew he never even cried. For long weeks and months, it was his resistance and his defiance in the face of our hated enemy that kept us going and gave us all hope. I longed for the day that he’d have a go at Piggy again. I was sure he would. I thought, and Marty did too, that Wes was just biding his time, picking the right moment.

      Then I began to notice that Wes was becoming more and more silent, more withdrawn, even with Marty and me, and we were his best friends. It happened slowly, so slowly that it was difficult at first to believe it was really happening. To start with I thought it was just because he was never allowed to be in the same working party as Marty and me, so we were simply seeing less of him. He often wasn’t with us during playtime either – Piggy regularly made him work on longer than the rest of us. And even when we were together, in the dormitory, Wes seemed to be shutting himself off from us. We’d been a threesome, all pals together, but now however much Marty and I tried to include him – and we did – we could both feel him slipping away from us and turning in on himself.

      In time he became almost a stranger to us, a loner, just as he’d been before during those first months at Cooper’s Station. We wanted him to be one of us again because we liked him, and also because we admired him for how he was facing down the loathsome Piggy Bacon, and humiliating him every day on our behalf. I thought maybe he was dealing with it in his own way, bearing it stoically and in silence. I thought he could take it. I was wrong.

      One morning Wes wouldn’t get up for roll call. He lay in his bed and wouldn’t move. Marty and I tried to persuade him, but he ignored us. He just turned his face away from us. We knew what would happen. Later after roll call, we were all standing out there in the cold of dawn, listening to Piggy inside the dormitory doing his worst. We heard him whacking Wes, yelling at him. “You asked for it, you little devil! I’ll teach you. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll teach you. No work, no food. See how you like that!” Every phrase was punctuated by the swish and whack of his stick. He was giving Wes a real pasting, and to our shame we just stood there and let it happen.

      Then we heard Wes talking back, a steely calm in his voice. “I won’t work for you, not ever again. And I won’t eat your rotten food either. You can keep it.” Moments later Piggy came storming out of the dormitory hut on to the verandah. He stood there surveying us all breathlessly, his face a beacon of rage.

      For days Wes lay there refusing to get up, and every morning Piggy would go in and beat him, and every day he stopped his food too. To begin with Marty and I tried to squirrel away something for him, bread crusts perhaps. But Wes just shook his head. He wouldn’t touch anything. He told us we shouldn’t do it because we’d only get into trouble ourselves. And anyway, he said, there was no point, because he meant what he’d said: he wouldn’t touch Piggy’s food, even if it came secretly from us. He would stay on hunger strike, he said, until Piggy Bacon treated us properly and stopped beating us. He would drink water though. So we’d bring him that as often as we could. We kept bringing food too but it was no use. He’d made up his mind, he said, and nothing would change it. He would sometimes smile at us, but weakly now as if we were kind strangers.

      He would say very little, and as he weakened he said less and less. But he did say something one evening when we were all three there together, Marty and I sitting on his bed. He said, and I’ve never forgotten his words: “You know what I think. I think there’s only one way out of this place, and I’ve found it.” Marty asked him what he meant, but he wouldn’t say. We both of us tried again and again to talk him out of his hunger strike, but he was dead set on it. He wouldn’t listen. I know now we should have tried harder. We should have tried much harder.

       “Did We Have the Children Here for This?”

      In the end we went to the only person we thought might help. We went to the farmhouse to see Ida. We told her everything: how Wes was beaten each morning, how he was on hunger strike, how he could die if something wasn’t done soon. Even while she was listening to us, she was looking around nervously. I could tell she just wanted us gone. And I could tell too that she already knew everything we’d been telling her. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said when we’d finished. “Go now, go quickly, before someone sees you. I’ll see what I can do.” And she closed the door and went back inside, leaving us standing there. I told Marty that I was sure she’d find a way to help Wes somehow.

      “She’d better,” he said, “or else he’ll be a gonner, that’s for sure.”

      That same night after lock-up, Ida came to the dormitory. It was the first time she’d ever come inside at night. We heard the door unlock, saw the dancing light of her torch. All of us expected it to be Piggy Bacon on one of his occasional late-night patrols so we lay doggo, feigning sleep. “I’ve come to see Wes,” she whispered. “Which bed?”

      When we heard who it was we all sat up. I took her there and showed her. She sat down on his bed and tried to talk to him. Wes didn’t respond at all, not at first. He wouldn’t even turn over and look at her. Everyone was there by now, gathered round his bed.

      Ida put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve brought you some cakes, Wes, and some milk,” she said. “Please, you must eat.” And she opened up the cake tin on her lap. “I’ve put a cherry on each one for you. You’ll like them.” Wes turned over then and looked up at her.

      “I can’t,” he said. “If I eat, he’ll make me work. And I won’t work for him. Never again. Not ever.”

      She tried. For an hour or more she did all she could to tempt him, to persuade him. She told him that God helped those who helped themselves, how she understood his suffering. “And I know that God does too,”