The Wreck of the Zanzibar Read online

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  Also by Michael Morpurgo

  Arthur: High King of Britain

  Escape from Shangri-La

  Friend or Foe

  From Hereabout Hill

  The Ghost of Grania O’Malley

  Kensuke’s Kingdom

  King of the Cloud Forests

  Little Foxes

  Long Way Home

  Mr Nobody’s Eyes

  My Friend Walter

  The Nine Lives of Montezuma

  The Sandman and the Turtles

  The Sleeping Sword

  Twist of Gold

  Waiting for Anya

  War Horse

  The War of Jenkins’ Ear

  The White Horse of Zennor

  Why the Whales Came

  For Younger Readers

  Conker

  Mairi’s Mermaid

  On Angel Wings

  The Best Christmas Present in the World

  The Marble Crusher

  MICHAEL MORPURGO

  First published in Great Britain in 1995 by Egmont Books Ltd

  This e-book edition published 2011 by Egmont UK Limited

  239 Kensington High Street, London W8 6SA

  Text Copyright 1995 Michael Morpurgo

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  ISBN 978 1 4052 3336 1

  eBook ISBN 978 1 7803 1142 5

  www.egmont.co.uk

  www.michaelmorpurgo.org

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Group

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Great-Aunt Laura

  January 20th

  February 12th

  February 14th

  February 15th

  July 21st

  July 30th

  July 31st

  August 23rd

  September 6th

  September 7th

  September 8th

  September 9th

  October 25th

  November 1st

  November 30th

  December 6th

  December 8th

  December 9th

  December 10th

  December 24th

  December 25th

  Marzipan

  To Marion, Keith, Daniel and Charlie

  GREAT-AUNT LAURA

  MY GREAT-AUNT LAURA DIED A FEW MONTHS ago. She was a hundred years old. She had her cocoa last thing at night, as she usually did, put the cat out, went to sleep and never woke up. There’s not a better way to die.

  I took the boat across to Scilly for the funeral – almost everyone in the family did. I met again cousins and aunts and uncles I hardly recognised, and who hardly recognised me. The little church on Bryher was packed, standing room only. Everyone on Bryher was there, and they came from all over the Scilly Isles, from St Mary’s, St Martin’s, St Agnes and Tresco.

  We sang the hymns lustily because we knew Great-aunt Laura would enjoy a rousing send-off. Afterwards we had a family gathering in her tiny cottage overlooking Stinking Porth Bay. There was tea and crusty brown bread and honey. I took one mouthful and I was a child again. Wanting to be on my own, I went up the narrow stairs to the room that had been mine when I came every summer for my holidays. The same oil lamp was by the bed, the same peeling wallpaper, the same faded curtains with the red sailing boats dipping through the waves.

  I sat down on the bed and closed my eyes. I was eight years old again and ahead of me were two weeks of sand and sea and boats and shrimping, and oystercatchers and gannets, and Great-aunt Laura’s stories every night before she drew the curtains against the moon and left me alone in my bed.

  Someone called from downstairs and I was back to now.

  Everyone was crowded into her sittingroom. There was a cardboard box open in the middle of the floor.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Michael,’ said Uncle Will. He was a little irritated, I thought.

  ‘We’ll begin then.’

  And a hush fell around the room. He dipped into the box and held up a parcel.

  ‘It looks as if she’s left us one each,’ said Uncle Will. Every parcel was wrapped in old newspaper and tied with string, and there was a large brown label attached to each one. Uncle Will read out the names. I had to wait some minutes for mine. There was nothing I particularly wanted, except Zanzibar of course, but then everyone wanted Zanzibar. Uncle Will was waving a parcel at me.

  ‘Michael,’ he said, ‘here’s yours.’

  I took it upstairs and unwrapped it sitting on the bed. It felt like a book of some sort, and so it was, but not a printed book. It was handmade, handwritten in pencil, the pages sewn together. The title on the cover read The Diary of Laura Perryman and there was a watercolour painting on the cover of a four-masted ship keeling over in a storm and heading for the rocks. With the book there was an envelope.

  I opened it and read.

  Dear Michael

  When you were little I told you lots and lots of stories about Bryher, about the Isles of Scilly. You know about the ghosts on Samson, about the bell that rings under the sea off St Martin’s, about King Arthur still waiting in his cave under the Eastern Isles.

  You remember? Well, here is my story, the story of me and my twin brother Billy whom you never knew. How I wish you had. It is a true story and I did not want it to die with me.

  When I was young I kept a diary, not an everyday diary. I didn’t write in it very often, just whenever I felt like it. Most of it isn’t worth the reading and I’ve already thrown it away – I’ve lived an ordinary sort of life. But for a few months a long, long time ago, my life was not ordinary at all. This is the diary of those few months.

  Do you remember you always used to ask where Zanzibar came from? (You called him ‘Marzipan’ when you were small.) I never told you, did I? I never told anyone. Well, now y
ou’ll find out at last.

  Goodbye, dear Michael, and God bless you.

  Your Great-aunt Laura

  P.S. I hope you like my little sketches. I’m a better artist than I am a writer, I think. When I come back in my next life – and I shall – I shall be a great artist. I’ve promised myself.

  JANUARY 20TH

  ‘LAURA PERRYMAN, YOU ARE FOURTEEN YEARS old today.’

  I said that to the mirror this morning when I wished myself ‘Happy Birthday’. Sometimes, like this morning, I don’t much want to be Laura Perryman, who’s lived on Bryher all her life and milks cows. I want to be Lady Eugenia Fitzherbert with long red hair and green eyes, who wears a big wide hat with a white ostrich feather and who travels the world in steamships with four funnels. But then, I also want to be Billy Perryman so I can row out in the gig and build boats and run fast. Billy’s fourteen too – being my twin brother, he would be. But I’m not Lady Eugenia Fitzherbert, whoever she is, and I’m not Billy; I’m me. I’m Laura Perryman and I’m fourteen years old today.

  Everyone is pleased with me, even Father, because I was the one who spotted the ship before they did on St Mary’s. It was just that I was in the right place at the right time, that’s all. I’d been milking the cows with Billy, as usual, and I was coming back with the buckets over Watch Hill when I saw sails on the horizon out beyond White Island. It looked like a schooner, three-masted. We left the buckets and ran all the way home.

  The gig was launched in five minutes. I watched the whole thing from the top of Samson Hill with everyone else. We saw the St Mary’s gig clear the harbour wall, the wind and the tide in her favour. The race was on. For some time it looked as if the St Mary’s gig would reach the schooner first, as she so often does, but we found clear water and a fair wind out beyond Samson and we were flying along. I could see the chief holding on to the mast, and Billy and Father pulling side by side in the middle of the boat. How I wanted to be one of them, to be out there rowing with them. I can handle an oar as well as Billy. He knows it, everyone knows it. But the chief won’t hear of it – and he’s the coxswain – and neither will Father. They think that’s an end of it. But it isn’t. One day, one day . . . Anyway today we won the race, so I should be pleased about that, I suppose.

  The St Mary’s boat lost an oar. She was left dead in the water and had to turn back. We watched our gig draw alongside the schooner and we all cheered till we were hoarse. Through the telescope I could see the chief climbing up the ladder to pilot the schooner into St Mary’s. I could see them helping him on board, then shaking hands with him. He took off his cap and waved and we all cheered again. It would mean money for everyone, and there’s precious little of that around. When the gig came back into Great Porth we were all there to meet her. We helped haul her up the beach. She’s always lighter when we’ve won. Father hugged me and Billy winked at me. It’s an American ship, he says, the General Lee, bound for New York. She’ll be tied up in St Mary’s for repairs to her mizzenmast and could be there a week, maybe more.

  This evening, Billy and I had our birthday cake from Granny May as usual. The chief and crew were all there as well, so the cake didn’t last long. They sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to us and then the chief said we were all a little less poor because Laura Perryman had spotted the General Lee. And I felt good. They were all smiling at me. Now’s the time, I thought, I’ll ask them again.

  ‘Can I row with Billy in the gig?’

  They all laughed and said what they always said, that girls don’t row in gigs. They never had.

  I went to the hen-house and cried. It’s the only place I can cry in peace. And then Granny May came in with the last piece of cake and said there are plenty of things that women can do, that men can’t. It doesn’t seem that way to me. I want to row in that gig, and I will. One day I will.

  Billy came into my room just now. He’s had another argument with Father – this time the milk buckets weren’t clean enough. There’s always something, and Father will shout at him so. Billy says he wants to go to America and that one day he will. He’s always saying things like that. I wish he wouldn’t. It frightens me. I wish Father would be kinder to him.

  FEBRUARY 12TH

  The Night of the Storm

  A TERRIBLE STORM LAST NIGHT AND THE PINE tree at the bottom of the garden came down, missing the hen-house by a whisker. The wind was so loud we never even heard it fall. I’m sure the hens did. We’ve lost more slates off the roof above Billy’s room. But we were lucky. The end of Granny May’s roof has gone completely. It just lifted off in the night. It’s sitting lopsided across her escallonia hedge. Father’s been up there all day trying to do what he can to keep the rain out. Everyone would be there helping, but there isn’t a building on the island that hasn’t been battered. Granny May just sat down in her kitchen all day and shook her head. She wouldn’t come away. She kept saying she’ll never be able to pay for a new roof and where will she go and what will she do? We stayed with her, Mother and me, giving her cups of tea and telling her it will be all right.

  ‘Something’ll turn up,’ Mother said. She’s always saying that. When Father gets all inside himself and miserable and silent, when the cows aren’t milking well, when he can’t afford the timber to build his boats, she always says, ‘Don’t worry, something’ll turn up.’

  She never says it to me because she knows I won’t believe her. I won’t believe her because I know she doesn’t believe it herself. She just says it to make him feel better. She just hopes it’ll come true. Still, it must have made Granny May feel better. She was her old self again this evening, talking away happily to herself. Everyone on the island calls her a mad old stick. But she’s not really mad. She’s just old and a bit forgetful. She does talk to herself, but then she’s lived alone most of her life, so it’s not surprising really. I love her because she’s my granny, because she loves me, and because she shows it. Mother has persuaded her to come and stay for a bit until she can move back into her house again.

  Billy’s in trouble again. He went off to St Mary’s without telling anyone. He was gone all day. When he got back this evening he never said a word to me or Granny May. Father buttoned his lip for as long as he could. It’s always been the same with Father and Billy. They set each other off. They always have. It’s Billy’s fault really, most of the time anyway. He starts it. He does things without thinking. He says things without thinking. And Father’s like a squall. He seems calm and quiet one moment and then . . . I could feel it coming. He banged the table and shouted. Billy had no right going off like that, he said, when there was so much to be put right at Granny May’s. Billy told him he’d do what he pleased, when he pleased and he wasn’t anyone’s slave. Then he got up from the table and ran out, slamming the door behind him. Mother went after him. Poor Mother, always the peacemaker.

  Father and Granny May had a good long talk about ‘young folk today’, and how they don’t know how lucky they are these days and how they don’t know what hard work is all about. They’re still at it downstairs. I went in to see Billy just a few minutes ago. He’s been crying, I can tell. He says he doesn’t want to talk. He’s thinking, he says. That makes a change, I suppose.

  FEBRUARY 14TH

  GRANNY MAY’S ROOF HAS BEEN PATCHED UP. She moved back home yesterday. We are on our own again.

  Father said at breakfast he thought Molly would calve down today and that Billy and me should keep an eye on her. Billy went off to St Mary’s and I went up to check Molly this afternoon on my own. She was lying down by the hedge, her calf curled up beside her. He looked as if he was sleeping at first, but he wasn’t. There were flies on his face and his eyes weren’t blinking. He was dead, and I couldn’t make Molly get up. I pushed her and pushed her, but she wouldn’t move. I didn’t tell Father because I knew how angry he’d be. We should have been there, Billy or me – one of us should have been there. I fetched Mother instead. She couldn’t get Molly on her feet either, so in the end we had to call Father from th
e boatshed. He tried everything, but Molly just laid her head down on the grass and died.

  Father sat beside her, stroked her neck and said nothing. But I knew what he was thinking. We only had four cows and we’d just lost the best of them. Then he looked up and said, ‘Where’s that boy?’

  Mother tried to comfort him, but he wouldn’t even answer her.

  ‘Just you wait till he gets back, just you wait.’ That was all he said.

  Billy came back at sundown. I saw him come sailing up Tresco Channel. I ran down to Green Bay to tell him about Molly, to warn him about Father. Then I saw that he was not alone.

  ‘This is Joseph Hannibal,’ said Billy. ‘He’s American, off the General Lee in St Mary’s.’

  Joseph Hannibal is a bear of a man with a bushy black beard and twitchy eyebrows that meet in the middle so he always looks angry. I never had a chance to tell Billy about Molly. He’d brought Joseph Hannibal back to see the island, he said, and they went off together up towards Hell Bay.

  I didn’t see them again until supper. Father sat in a stony silence and Mother smiled all the time, thinly, like she does when she is worried. But after a time she was doing what I was doing, what Billy was doing, what even Father was doing. We were all listening to Joseph Hannibal.

  He’s been all over the world, the South Sea Islands, Australia, Japan, China, the frozen North. He’s sailed on tea clippers, on steamships, and he’s been whaling too.

  ‘Yessir,’ he went on, puffing at his pipe, ‘I’ve seen whales longer than this entire house and that’s the honest truth.’

  You had to listen to him – I mean, you wanted to listen. You wanted him to go on all night. Then Mother said we should go up to bed – that we had the cows to milk early in the morning. Billy said he wasn’t tired, that he’d be up later. He stayed where he was. Father looked at him hard, but Billy didn’t seem to notice. He had eyes only for Joseph Hannibal.