Of Lions and Unicorns Read online

  “I just felt a bit sick,” I said. Then I opened my trunk. On the top of my clothes was a note and three bars of Cadbury’s chocolate. The note read: Have a good term. Love Mum.

  Simpson spotted the chocolate, and pounced. Suddenly everyone in the dormitory was around me, and at my chocolate, like gannets. I managed to keep a little back for myself, which I hid under my pillow, and ate late that night as I listened to the bell in the clock tower chiming midnight. As it finished I heard Simpson crying to himself, as silently as he could.

  “You all right, Sim?” I whispered.

  “Fine,” he sniffed. And then: “Pongo, did you scarper?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Next time you go, take me with you. Promise?”

  “Promise,” I replied.

  But I never did scarper again. Perhaps I never again plucked up the courage; perhaps I listened to the old lady’s advice. I’ve certainly never forgotten it. It was my one and only great escape.

  Michael doesn’t remember his father, an RAF pilot lost in the war. But his Auntie Snowdrop gives him a medal, and then a photograph, and a story begins to unfold …

  t wasn’t until I felt the glass that I knew it for what it was. There, looking up at me, was Papa’s face. The frame was not polished, I noticed, as it always had been before on the mantelpiece in their sitting room in Folkestone. I felt Maman’s hand on my shoulder.

  “He looks pleased to see you, chéri,” she said.

  When Auntie Pish fell asleep soon after, we crept out of her room and drove home. I sat in the car with the parcel on my lap all the way back to London, opening up the wrapping from time to time to look at Papa.

  “I’ll polish that frame when we get home,” Maman said.

  “I’ll do it,” I told her.

  In the end Maman and I did it together, on the kitchen table, with Jasper up on a chair beside us, watching. Maman did the hard work, putting the polish on, and rubbing the tarnish off. It took some doing. Then I had the satisfaction of shining it up, breathing and polishing till it gleamed. Once it was done I took it up to my bedroom and stood it up on my desk. I sat there and stared at Papa. That was when Auntie Snowdrop’s words came back to me – I hadn’t thought about them in a long while. “Always remember, Michael, it’s not the face that matters, not the skin, not the hair, it’s what lies beneath. You have to look deeper, Michael, behind. Look through the glass, through the photo, and you’ll find out who your Papa really was.”

  I looked hard into Papa’s face, into his eyes, trying all I could to know the man behind the glass, behind the photo, behind the eyes.

  Jasper was with me, snuffling around my feet. I wasn’t paying him any attention, which was why, I suppose, he decided to jump up on to my desk and shove his nose into my face, knocking the photograph over as he did so. I heard the glass shatter as it fell.

  “Get off, Jasper,” I shouted, pushing him aside angrily. I’d never been so angry with him before. As I was standing the frame up again the glass fell out on to my desk in several pieces. I’ve often thought since that Jasper might have done it on purpose, because he knew, because he was trying to tell me, because Auntie Snowdrop had told him all about it, and he knew that’s what Auntie Snowdrop wanted him to do. He wanted me to find it, and so did Auntie Snowdrop. That’s why he broke it. That’s what I think, anyway.

  It was the first time I’d seen Papa’s face not through glass. He was already somehow more real to me, closer and more alive without the glass in between us. The photo was loose in the frame now, and had slipped down. I noticed there was one small piece of broken glass still trapped there in the bottom corner of the frame. I tried to prise it out with the point of my pencil, but I couldn’t do it. I’d have to open up the frame at the back if I was going to get it out.

  I hadn’t really noticed, not until now, but the back of the frame was nothing but a piece of cardboard, held in place by a few rusty-looking pins. All I had to do was to pull these out one by one and the cardboard came away easily enough. I had expected to see simply the back of the photograph, but there was something else there, a writing pad about the same size as the photo. On the front it said, ‘Basildon Bond’, in fancy printing, and below it, written in pencil, in large capital letters:

  “WHO I AM, WHAT I’VE DONE,

  AND WHO YOU ARE”

  BY

  MARTHA MAHONEY

  (AUNTIE SNOWDROP)

  FOR MICHAEL, SO HE’LL KNOW

  FOR HIS EYES ONLY

  WRITTEN IN MAY 1950

  It took me a little while to cast my mind back, to work it out. This must have been written then about a month or so before she died, because I knew that was in June of 1950. (I checked later in my diary and I was right about that.)

  She’d hidden it behind the photo for me to find. Behind the photo! Behind the photo!

  Maman called up from downstairs. “Chéri, I’ve got to go down to the shops. Have you got that dog up there? I’d better take him with me. He hasn’t had his walk yet. You’ll be all right on your own?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I told her. I opened the door to let Jasper out. He didn’t seem to want to go even when Maman whistled for him. She had to shout for him more than once. Even then he went only because I pushed him out – I was still cross with him. He gave me a long last look before he left. Read it, his eyes were telling me. Read it. Then he was gone, scuttling down the stairs. I heard the front door close after them.

  I was alone. I went back to my desk, picked up Auntie Snowdrop’s writing pad, sat on my bed, pillows piled behind me, rested the pad on my knees, and opened it. My heart was pounding. I knew even as I began to read – and I have no idea how I knew – that my life would be changed for ever, that after I’d read this I would never be the same person again.

  Who I am, What I’ve done, and Who you are

  I’m tell you this, writing it down for you, Michael, because we all have a right to know who we are. I should have told you myself, face to face a long time ago. Early on, when you were little, I always thought you were too young – or that was my excuse. And then as you grew up, I didn’t know how to tell you. I never had the courage, that’s the truth of it. I should have told your Maman too, but I could never quite bring myself to do that either.

  Now that I’ve been told in the hospital that time is running out for me, that I have only a few months left, I thought this was the one last thing I had to do. Somehow I had to tell you, and there seemed to me only one way to do it. I would put it all down on paper, and arrange things, if I could, so that one day you would find it and read it for yourself. I did try to point you in the right direction. I did tell you where to look, didn’t I? Look behind the face. Remember?

  I could have given it to your Auntie Mary for her to give to you, but I don’t want her to know I’m doing this – I don’t like to upset her. And anyway, as you’ll soon discover, this is between you and me. Your Auntie Mary knows the truth of everything that’s written here – she was so much part of the whole story – but she’s always told me it was best to keep it as a secret between her and me, just the two of us, and so it always has been. That way, she thinks, no one comes to any harm.

  Until just recently, until my last visit to the hospital, when they told me, I suppose I always used to believe she was right. But not any more. I think there are some things that are so much part of who we are, that we should know about them, that we have a right to know about them.

  If you’re reading this at all, Michael, then it means you’ve found my little writing pad behind the photo of your Papa, just as I intended you to. Please don’t be too upset. Read it again from time to time as you get older. I think it will be easier to understand as you get older. It’s not so much that wisdom comes with age – as we older people rather like to believe. It doesn’t. But I am sure that as we grow up we do become more able to understand ourselves and other people a little better. We are more able to deal with difficulty, and to forgive perhaps. If you are anythi
ng like me, Michael – and I think you probably are – I am sure you will become more understanding and forgiving as the years pass. I hope so, because I’m sure that it’s only in forgiving that we find real peace of mind.

  I’m writing this as well, because I want you to feel proud of who you are, and proud of the people who made you. Believe you me, you have much to feel proud about. Perhaps my problem has always been that I have never been proud enough of who I am. I am a bit muddle-headed, simple-minded perhaps, and foolish, certainly foolish. I have always allowed my sister, whom I love dearly, to do most of my thinking for me. It’s just how we are and always have been. She’s been the strong one all my life, my rock you might say. I know she can seem a bit of a know-all, a bit overbearing; but as you’ll soon discover, she has looked after me, stood by me when no one else would. There’s a lot more to Mary than meets the eye – that’s true of everyone, I think. I should have been quite lost in this life without her. So here’s our story, hers and mine – and most importantly, yours.

  In 1943, Lily Tregenza was living in a sleepy seaside village, scarcely touched by the war. But all that was soon to change. This is how I began to learn of her story …

  Ever since I could remember I’d been coming down to Slapton for my holidays, mostly on my own. Grandma’s bungalow was more of a home to me than anywhere, because we’d moved house often – too often for my liking. I’d just get used to things, settle down, make a new set of friends and then we’d be off, on the move again. Slapton summers with Grandma were regular and reliable and I loved the sameness of them, and Harley in particular.

  Grandma used to take me out in secret on Grandpa’s beloved motorbike, his pride and joy, an old Harley-Davidson. We called it Harley. Before Grandpa became ill they would go out on Harley whenever they could, which wasn’t often. She told me once those were the happiest times they’d had together. Now that he was too ill to take her out on Harley, she’d take me instead. We’d tell Grandpa all about it, of course, and he liked to hear exactly where we’d been, what field we’d stopped in for our picnic and how fast we’d gone. I’d relive it for him and he loved that. But we never told my family. It was to be our secret, Grandma said, because if anyone back home ever got to know she took me out on Harley they’d never let me come to stay again. She was right too. I had the impression that neither my father (her own son) nor my mother really saw eye to eye with Grandma. They always thought she was a bit stubborn, eccentric, irresponsible even. They’d be sure to think that my going out on Harley with her was far too dangerous. But it wasn’t. I never felt unsafe on Harley, no matter how fast we went. The faster the better. When we got back, breathless with excitement, our faces numb from the wind, she’d always say the same thing: “Supreme, Boowie! Wasn’t that just supreme?”

  When we weren’t out on Harley, we’d go on long walks down to the beach and fly kites, and on the way back we’d watch the moorhens and coots and herons on Slapton Ley. We saw a bittern once. “Isn’t that supreme?” Grandma whispered in my ear. Supreme was always her favourite word for anything she loved: for motorbikes or birds or lavender. The house always smelt of lavender. Grandma adored the smell of it, the colour of it. Her soap was always lavender, and there was a sachet in every wardrobe and chest of drawers – to keep moths away, she said.

  Best of all, even better than clinging on to Grandma as we whizzed down the deep lanes on Harley, were the wild and windy days when the two of us would stomp noisily along the pebble beach of Slapton Sands, clutching on to one another so we didn’t get blown away. We could never be gone for long though, because of Grandpa. He was happy enough to be left on his own for a while, but only if there was sport on the television. So we would generally go off for our ride on Harley or on one of our walks when there was a cricket match on, or rugby. He liked rugby best. He had been good at it himself when he was younger, very good, Grandma said proudly. He’d even played for Devon from time to time – whenever he could get away from the farm, that is.

  Grandma told me a little about the busy life they’d had before I was born, up on the farm – she’d taken me up there to show me. So I knew how they’d milked a herd of sixty South Devon cows and that Grandpa had gone on working as long as he could. In the end, his illness took hold and he couldn’t go up and down stairs any more, they’d had to sell up the farm and the animals and move into the bungalow down in Slapton village. Mostly, though, she’d want to talk about me, ask about me, and she really wanted to know too. Maybe it was because I was her only grandson. She never seemed to judge me either. So there was nothing I didn’t tell her about my life at home or my friends or my worries. She never gave advice, she just listened.

  Once, I remember, she told me that whenever I came to stay it made her feel younger. “The older I get,” she said, “the more I want to be young. That’s why I love going out on Harley. And I’m going to go on being young till I drop, no matter what.”

  I understood well enough what she meant by “no matter what”. Each time I’d gone down in the last couple of years before Grandpa died she had looked more grey and weary. I would often hear my father pleading with her to have Grandpa put into a nursing home, that she couldn’t go on looking after him on her own any longer. Sometimes the pleading sounded more like bullying to me, and I wished he’d stop. Anyway, Grandma wouldn’t hear of it. She did have a nurse who came in to bath Grandpa each day now, but Grandma had to do the rest all by herself, and she was becoming exhausted. More and more of my walks along the beach were alone nowadays. We couldn’t go out on Harley at all. She couldn’t leave Grandpa even for ten minutes without him fretting, without her worrying about him. But after Grandpa was in bed we would either play Scrabble, which she would let me win sometimes, or we’d talk on late into the night – or rather I would talk and she would listen. Over the years I reckon I must have given Grandma a running commentary on just about my entire life, from the first moment I could speak, all the way through my childhood.

  But now, after Grandpa’s funeral, as we walked together down the road to the pub with everyone following behind us, it was her turn to do the talking, and she was talking about herself, talking nineteen to the dozen, as she’d never talked before. Suddenly I was the listener.

  The wake in the pub was crowded, and of course everyone wanted to speak to Grandma, so we didn’t get a chance to talk again that day, not alone. I was playing waiter with the tea and coffee, and plates of quiches and cakes. When we left for home that evening Grandma hugged me especially tight, and afterwards she touched my cheek as she’d always done when she was saying goodnight to me before she switched off the light. She wasn’t crying, not quite. She whispered to me as she held me. “Don’t you worry about me, Boowie dear,” she said. “There’s times it’s good to be on your own. I’ll go for rides on Harley – Harley will help me feel better. I’ll be fine.” So we drove away and left her with the silence of her empty house all around her.

  A few weeks later she came to us for Christmas, but she seemed very distant, almost as if she were lost inside herself: there, but not there somehow. I thought she must still be grieving and I knew that was private, so I left her alone and we didn’t talk much. Yet, strangely, she didn’t seem too sad. In fact she looked serene, very calm and still, a dreamy smile on her face, as if she was happy enough to be there, just so long as she didn’t have to join in too much. I’d often find her sitting and gazing into space, remembering a Christmas with Grandpa perhaps, I thought, or maybe a Christmas down on the farm when she was growing up.

  On Christmas Day itself, after lunch, she said she wanted to go for a walk. So we went off to the park, just the two of us. We were sitting watching the ducks on the pond when she told me. “I’m going away, Boowie,” she said. “It’ll be in the New Year, just for a while.”

  “Where to?” I asked her.

  “I’ll tell you when I get there,” she replied. “Promise. I’ll send you a letter.”

  She wouldn’t tell me any more no matter how
much I badgered her. We took her to the station a couple of days later and waved her off. Then there was silence. No letter, no postcard, no phone call. A week went by. A fortnight. No one else seemed to be that concerned about her, but I was. We all knew she’d gone travelling, she’d made no secret of it, although she’d told no one where she was going. But she had promised to write to me and nothing had come. Grandma never broke her promises. Never. Something had gone wrong, I was sure of it.

  Then one Saturday morning I picked up the post from the front door mat. There was one for me. I recognised her handwriting at once. The envelope was quite heavy too. Everyone else was soon busy reading their own post, but I wanted to open Grandma’s envelope in private. So I ran upstairs to my room, sat on my bed and opened it. I pulled out what looked more like a manuscript than a letter, about thirty or forty pages long at least, closely typed. On the cover page she had sellotaped a black and white photograph (more brown and white really) of a small girl who looked a lot like me, smiling toothily into the camera and cradling a large black and white cat in her arms. There was a title: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, with her name underneath, Lily Tregenza. Attached to the manuscript by a large multi-coloured paperclip was this letter.

  Dearest Boowie,

  This is the only way I could think of to explain to you properly why I’ve done what I’ve done. I’ll have told you some of this already over the years, but now I want you to know the whole story. Some people will think I’m mad, perhaps most people – I don’t mind that. But you won’t think I’m mad, not when you’ve read this. You’ll understand, I know you will. That’s why I particularly wanted you to read it first. You can show it to everyone else afterwards. I’ll phone soon … when you’re over the surprise.

  When I was about your age – and by the way that’s me on the front cover with Tips – I used to keep a diary. I was an only child, so I’d talk to myself in my diary. It was company for me, almost like a friend. So what you’ll be reading is the story of my life as it happened, beginning in the autumn of 1943, during the Second World War, when I was growing up on the family farm. I’ll be honest with you, I’ve done quite a lot of editing. I’ve left bits out here and there because some of it was too private or too boring or too long. I used to write pages and pages sometimes, just talking to myself, rambling on.