Michael Morpurgo - Mr Nobody's Eyes

‘Always fussy, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Spoilt, that’s the trouble with you. There’ll be no bread-and-butter pudding until you finish it.’

‘Can I see Mum first?’ he said.

‘The doctor’s with her now, Harry,’ Bill said. ‘You can see her later.’

‘I just want to see her, that’s all.’

‘Later,’ said Bill, an edge to his voice. ‘I’m not even allowed up there now, no one is. Now eat your tea like Granny says, there’s a good lad.’ Harry looked from one to the other. Something was wrong, very wrong. For a start there was no lecture about being late. No one had noticed the tear in his trousers, and Granny Wesley hadn’t even told him to wash his hands before he ate his tea. Perhaps this was a good time to hand over the letter from Miss Hardcastle, he thought.

‘The teacher said I was to give you this,’ he said, taking it out of his pocket and pushing it across the table towards Bill.

‘What is it?’ Bill asked. There were dark, deep rings under his eyes magnified by his glasses.

‘Just a letter,’ said Harry, shrugging. Bill looked down at the envelope but didn’t seem in the slightest bit interested in opening it.

‘Eat up, eat up,’ said Granny Wesley, clapping her hands. Harry ate in silence, glancing from time to time at Bill who kept taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, and then at Granny Wesley who was knitting. She was always knitting, her needles clicking interminably, sometimes in unison with the tick of the kitchen clock.

He was half way through his bread and butter pudding when they heard voices from the room above them. A door shut. Footsteps were coming down the stairs.

Granny Wesley put down her knitting. ‘You stay here and you eat every last bit of it, and don’t forget your orange juice,’ she said as she opened the door into the front hall. Bill went after her, closing the door behind him. The whispering in the front hall was tantalizingly just inaudible. Harry crept to the door and put his ear to the keyhole. He could still hear no better, so he looked instead. The doctor was in his shirtsleeves and braces and was standing at the foot of the stairs. Bill was listening, head lowered, and Granny Wesley was nodding and looking at her watch. After a few moments she turned away and came back towards the kitchen door. Harry scuttled back to the table and bolted down the last of his bread-and-butter pudding. The whispering was louder now and he could just make out what they were saying. It was Bill’s voice.

‘I don’t care what you do with him . . . I want him out of here . . . for as long as possible.’ Then the door opened and Granny Wesley came in alone.

‘Can’t I see her now?’ Harry asked. ‘Is she all right?’

‘I have a nice surprise for you, young man,’ said Granny Wesley. She often called him ‘young man’ and that made Harry feel very old. ‘You and me, we’re going out,’ she said.

‘Why?’ said Harry. She’d never taken him out anywhere before.

‘Why? Because there’s something I want you to see.’

‘What?’

‘How would you like to go to the circus, young man? I saw the notice on the way back from the shops today. There’s elephants, sea lions, clowns. I haven’t been to the circus – oooh – since I don’t know when, since before the war certainly. Half past six it starts. We can be there in a quarter of an hour if we hurry.’

Harry didn’t argue. He had his coat and scarf on in a flash. Bill saw them out. ‘Don’t worry about your mother, Harry,’ he said. ‘She’ll be all right.’

Harry loved everything about buses, the race up the winding stairs to get to the top before the bus lurched forward, the ping of the bell as the conductor called out, ‘Hold very tight please’. He liked the seat at the front, so that he could hang on to the white rail in front of him and steer the bus round the corners. It was only a few stops, but to Harry’s great delight it took an age in the smog. Granny Wesley let him give the money to the bus conductor. Harry watched eagerly as he picked out the tickets, punched them and handed them over. ‘You can keep them,’ said Granny Wesley. She was being unusually kind to him, and for a moment Harry wondered why; but then they were on the pavement and caught up in a flood of people and carried along with them towards the light of a great tent with coloured lights flickering all around and music blaring from loudspeakers. Granny Wesley guided him from behind into a ringside seat and gave him a toffee apple. He tried to bite through the outside of it and failed. He couldn’t open his teeth wide enough.

He was still licking at the toffee when the lights went down, the audience hushed and the drums rolled to a crashing crescendo. A spotlight picked out a white horse, neck arched, walking out into the ring, and then behind came another, and then another, and another and another, until the ring was circled with identical horses. Harry was so close to them that he could smell them as they passed by. The sawdust from their feet flew up and landed on his coat. It was too close for comfort for Granny Wesley who held her handkerchief up to her mouth. She was to keep it there all through the performance. Then came the ringmaster, striding out into the ring, resplendent in red-spangled evening jacket and top hat, a whip in his hand. The horses came to a snorting halt and turned inwards towards him, a tail swishing right in front of Harry’s face. The loudspeaker whistled and crackled. ‘Signor Blondini is proud to present to you this evening his world famous travelling circus.’ Trumpets blared raucously and the show began.

Harry could see the ringmaster’s face. He expected him to be Signor Blondini but he wasn’t, he was sure of that. He was too tall, too young. As each act came and went he looked for Signor Blondini and Ocky, but very soon he became so absorbed in everything he saw, in the colour and the noise of it, that he forgot all about them. There were acrobats on horseback, somersaulting as they rode, jumping from horse to horse. There were sea lions tossing their footballs from tail to nose and twirling them in the air. There were elephants trooping around the ring, trunks entwined with tails, and dogs that danced on their hind legs. There were jugglers, trick cyclists, fire eaters and, in between every act, the clowns. No one on the front row escaped the soapy water. No one really wanted to – except Granny Wesley. Whenever the clowns came by with their buckets she shrank back in her seat. Harry thought she was trying to pretend she wasn’t there.

When Ocky did appear at last, Harry was taken completely by surprise. She was leading a white-faced clown into the centre of the ring. Harry nearly called out, he was so excited. The clown took a violin from under his arm and sat down on a white chair. The lights dimmed and he began to play a plaintive ringing tune that silenced at once all the buzz and the laughter in the audience. Ocky sat at his feet and picked at the sand, eating whatever it was that she found there while the clown played on. He was a sad, pathetic figure out there in the centre of the ring, somehow not in keeping with the brash, bombastic spectacle of the circus. Not for him the baggy trousers, the red braces, the outsize shoes and the grotesquely painted faces of the other clowns. He was dressed down to his red knee-length socks in a black costume covered in large yellow and red butterflies. When he played ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ the audience joined in humming softly – some singing the words, but never too loud. And then suddenly the lights were up again and the clown-gang was back. They gathered round to mimic the butterfly clown as he played, but he took no notice. They danced idiotically, waltzing together and polka-ing together, tripping over each other; but the butterfly clown ignored them and played on. They picked up their buckets and were about to empty them on the butterfly clown, turning to the audience to ask if they should. ‘No! No!’ came the shout, and still the violin played on, a new tune now, a different tempo, faster and more rhythmic. Quite suddenly Ocky was on her feet clapping her hands. All the clowns froze where they were for just a moment, and then the butterfly clown began to sway in time to the music as he played. The clowns followed suit, no longer mocking him. They were becoming lost in the music, hypnotised by it. After a minute or two the butterfly clown stopped playing and laid the violin down on the chair behind him. He looked around the laughing audience, pointed to the still swaying clowns and put his finger to his lips to quieten the audience. Then he took several green balls out of his pockets and began to juggle with them expertly. The clowns did the same. They too dipped into their pockets and took out several green balls and they too began to juggle, throwing the balls higher and higher and then lower and lower, and in perfect time with the butterfly clown. When the butterfly clown finished, he put them back in his pocket, but he left one in his mouth. The clowns, mesmerised, did the same. It was the first and only act that Granny Wesley seemed to enjoy, and she laughed freely, a laugh Harry never knew she had in her. Whatever the butterfly clown did, the other clowns had to do, too. They could not help themselves. If he scratched his nose, they did. If he yawned, they did. If he stood on his head, they did. The audience howled for more, longing for the clown-gang to get more of their come-uppance. The butterfly clown bent down and whispered to Ocky, who ran off and fetched a bucket, a red one marked ‘OOZE’ in big letters. She dragged it back and left it at the butterfly clown’s feet. The butterfly clown bent down and whispered something to Ocky who clapped herself enthusiastically and then resumed her sitting position. All this time the clowns were duly following the butterfly clown’s every move, bending down and whispering to chimpanzees that weren’t there, and fetching their red buckets marked ‘OOZE’. And when the butterfly clown picked up the bucket Ocky had brought him, of course the clowns picked up their buckets, too. The butterfly clown, a wide grin on his face now, showed the audience that his bucket was empty. He turned round and round so that everyone could see. Everyone knew what he had in mind now and willed him on to do it. ‘Yes! Yes!’ they roared. ‘Yes! Yes!’ He didn’t need much persuasion, but he pretended he did until the audience had insisted loudly enough and long enough. Satisfied now that this was really what they wanted, he lifted the bucket up above his head and turned it upside down, and so did all the clowns around him, covering themselves in a white ooze that dribbled over their heads and down their shoulders. As the clowns wiped their faces the audience roared their approval. They stamped and they clapped, Harry as loudly as anyone. Ocky clapped her hands with everyone else, and then led the butterfly clown in a lap of triumph around the circus ring.