Michael Morpurgo - My Friend Walter

‘ Even such is time! Who takes in trust

Our youth, our joys, and all we have,

And pays us but with age and dust;

Who, in the dark and silent grave,

When we have wandered all our ways,

Shuts up the story of our days!

But from this earth, this grave, this dust,

The Lord will raise me up I trust .

‘Not bad, eh, to make that up the night before you have your head cut off? Brave man he was, must have been eh? And every evening y’know he’d walk up and down the ramparts out there to stretch his legs. Raleigh’s Walk we call it now.’ He bent down and spoke in a hushed voice to a little boy who was sucking his finger. ‘And there’s some who say he still does.’

‘But you haven’t ever seen him, though?’ said the little boy’s mother quickly, more to reassure herself than her son, I thought. The little boy’s eyes were wide with terror. He had his whole hand in his mouth now.

‘Nope,’ said the Beefeater, smiling conspiratorially and stroking his moustache, ‘not myself I haven’t, but I knowed someone that knowed someone else who knew a friend of his and his cousin’s niece’s nephew said he’d seen it.’ And he boomed with laughter as they all did.

When they’d finished it was the boy’s father who spoke. ‘How come he was put in here anyhow?’ he said. They were Americans. You could tell from their accents and their haircuts and their spongy shoes. ‘After all, didn’t he find America for you British? I mean, we wouldn’t be speaking English if he hadn’t found the good old U S of A, would we? We’d be speaking Spanish or Dutch or something. And didn’t he sink lots of those Spanish galleons for you in the Armada? And didn’t he burn lots of others?’

His wife joined in. ‘Yeah, and wasn’t it Walter Raleigh who brought back the potatoes from Virginia and taught you British how to grow them?’

The Beefeater stroked his moustache and thought for a while. ‘I believe he did, lady. I believe he did. All I know is, he was a traitor and that’s why he found himself inside here. I mean he wouldn’t hardly have been put in here if he was innocent, would he?’ At this the Americans looked at each other and fell silent, until the little boy piped up. ‘Mommy,’ he said. ‘It smells in here.’

‘Well it is old, dear,’ said his mother. ‘Perhaps it’s the damp.’

‘You’re right, son,’ said his father, lifting his nose and sniffing the air. ‘Smells just like tobacco smoke to me – cigars, perhaps.’

A tall man in spectacles at the back of the party spoke next. He was carrying a book in his hand and he spoke very deliberately and earnestly. ‘In zis book it say zat Sir Valter Raleigh was ze virst man’ (he wasn’t an American this one, I could tell) ‘who brought ze smoking of ze tobacco in England.’

‘That’s right, sir,’ said the Beefeater. He leant down and whispered to the little boy again. ‘P’raps it’s old Sir Walter himself puffing away on his pipe, son. P’raps that’s what you’re smelling.’ The boy’s hand went straight back into his mouth and everyone roared with laughter, except the boy and his mother. ‘Before you go, ladies and gentlemen, you’d better take the opportunity to walk up and down Raleigh’s Walk a few times – it’s just outside the door. It’ll give you a feel of the place. Like I said, old Walter Raleigh himself used to pace up and down there every day he was here.’

But the tall bespectacled man had not yet finished. He waved his guide book in the air. ‘But I do not exactly understand,’ he said. ‘Zey cut off his head in ze end, yes?’

‘That’s right sir,’ said the Beefeater, trying his best to be patient.

‘Zen vy did zey vait sirteen years to cut off his head? Vy did zey not cut off it at once, in ze beginning?’

‘Well,’ said the Beefeater. ‘Well, things was different then, in them days, wasn’t they? I mean if you was a king, you could change your mind when you felt like it, couldn’t you? And old James the First, he just kept changing his mind. In the end he let old Sir Walter out sort of on bail. Sir Walter told the King he knew where there was this gold mine in South America, Guiana it was, and so King James sent him off to find it, but he never found it, see? And so he came back empty-handed. ’Course the King was none too pleased at that so he chopped off his head.’

‘But that isn’t fair,’ said the little boy’s father. ‘Not cricket, as you British say.’

‘That’s true ’nough sir,’ said the Beefeater. ‘I suppose if you think about it, and to be honest I haven’t much, but if you did think about it nothing much that happened in this place in them days was very fair. They was hard times, sir, hard times.’

‘Daddy, I can still smell that smoke,’ said the little boy, looking around in alarm. ‘Can we go now?’ And so they went, the little boy sucking his hand and looking round over his shoulder directly at me, it seemed, as he went out of the door. At last we were left alone.

Walter Raleigh left me wrapped in his black velvet cloak and limped across the room to the door. ‘They’ve gone,’ he said and he closed the door again.

‘But why didn’t they see us?’ I asked. ‘That little boy, he was looking right at me.’

‘Cousin Bess, though I yearn often to be once more amongst the living, there are some advantages to be had in my present more spiritual state. Since I am but a spirit, and a spirit has no body, I may go where I will unseen. My cloak is part of me and I may hide what I will under it. I may pass through walls and doors as if they were not there, and I may eavesdrop invisibly on the living world as much as I wish – indeed there is little else to do in this wretched damp place. Oh, do not think cousin, that I do not still feel the damp in my bones. To be a ghost is to live with all the pain of the living but with little of the pleasure.’

‘But I still don’t understand: how can I see you and they can’t?’ I asked.

Sir Walter smiled. ‘You can only see me because I wish you to see me. I do not wish them to see me, so they cannot. Seek to know no more, good cousin, for I know but how things are and not how they come to be so. I may tell you that I am often sorely tempted to use this ghostly talent and howl around the towers like a proper ghost, for it would certainly alarm those ignorant wretches such as the one we have just seen who have so cruelly wronged my name in history. For what is Walter Raleigh known? For laying his cloak in a puddle and for ending his days a condemned traitor. They spoke false. I was wronged, cousin; wronged, I tell you. I mind not for myself, not any more. What harm can it do me now? But I mind for my name and for my family’s honour. For I never in my life betrayed my country. Indeed, I spent all my life in the loyal service of my queen and her realm. They wronged me by my death, cousin; and such a wrong should be righted – is that not so, Bess?’ I nodded. ‘I tell you, I cannot rest for this hurt inside me. It lingers in me like the ague that racks my bones. I would be free of it. I will have again what was rightly mine and what was taken so cruelly from me and my family. I will have back what is mine – mark my words, cousin.’

I shrank back from his anger and he saw that he had frightened me. He came towards me, arms outstretched to comfort me. He was dressed, I noticed, in black silk, or perhaps it was satin, I could not tell which; but it glistened even in the gloom of the room. He wore a doublet, a waistcoat and breeches, and all were black. ‘I would not hurt you dear cousin, not for all the gold in the world,’ he said, and he reached out his gloved hand, lifted my chin and looked into my eyes. ‘I promise you, chick, Walter Raleigh is your friend and your humble servant.’ And he took my hand and kissed it.