Favourite Cat Stories: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, Kaspar and The Butterfly Lion. Michael Morpurgo
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on the outside, but underneath she’s an even worser witch than Miss McAllister. I know I’m not supposed to say worser but it sounds worser than worse, so I’m using it. So there. We call her Bloomers because of her name of course, and also because she came into class once with her skirt hitched up by mistake in her navy-blue bloomers.
Today Bloomers gave me a detention just because my hands were dirty again. “Lily Tregenza, I think you are one of the most untidiest girls I have ever known.” She can’t even say her words properly. She says zink instead of think and de instead of the. She can’t even speak English properly and she’s supposed to be our teacher. So I said it wasn’t fair, and she gave me another detention. I hate her accent; she could be German. Maybe she’s a spy! She looks like a spy. I hate her, I really do. And what’s more, she favours the townies, the evacuees. That’s because she’s come down from London like they have. She told us so.
We’ve got three more townies in my class this term, all from London like the others. There’s so many of them now there’s hardly enough room to play in the playground. There’s almost as many of them as there are of us. They’re always fighting too. Most of them are all right, I suppose, except that they talk funny. I can’t understand half of what they say. And they stick together too much. They look at us sometimes like we’ve got measles or mumps or something, like they think we’re all stupid country bumpkins, which we’re not.
One of the new ones – Barry Turner he’s called – is living in Mrs Morwhenna’s house, next to the shop. He’s got red hair everywhere, even red eyebrows. And he picks his nose which is disgusting. He gets lots more spellings wrong than me, but Bloomers never gives him a detention. I know why too. It’s because Barry’s dad was killed in the airforce at Dunkirk. My dad’s away in the army, and he’s alive. So just because he’s not dead, I get a detention. Is that fair? Barry told Maisie, who sits next to me in class now and who’s my best friend sometimes, that she could kiss him if she wanted to. He’s only been at our school a week. Cheeky monkey. Maisie said she let him because he’s young – he’s only ten – and because she was sorry for him, on account of his dad, and also because she wanted to find out if townies were any good at it. She said it was a bit sticky but all right. I don’t do kissing. I don’t see the point of it, not if it’s sticky.
Tips is going to have her kittens any day now. She’s all saggy baggy underneath. Last time she had them on my bed. She’s the best cat (and the biggest) in the whole wide world and I love her more than anyone or anything. But she keeps having kittens, and I wish she wouldn’t because we can’t ever keep them. No one wants them because everyone’s got cats of their own already, and they all have kittens too.
It was all because of Tips and her kittens that I had my row with Dad, the biggest row of my life, when he was last home on leave from the army. He did it when I was at school, without even telling me. As soon as they were born he took all her kittens out and drowned them just like that. When I found out I said terrible things to him, like I would never ever speak to him again and how I hoped the Germans would kill him. I was horrible to him. I never made it up with him either. I wrote him a letter saying I was sorry, but he hasn’t replied and I wish he would. He probably hates me now, and I wouldn’t blame him. If anything happened to him I couldn’t bear it, not after what I said.
Mum keeps telling me I shouldn’t let my tongue do my thinking for me, and I’m not quite sure what that means. She’s just come in to say good night and blow out my lamp. She says I spend too much time writing my diary. She thinks I can’t write in the dark, but I can. My writing may look a bit wonky in the morning, but I don’t care.
We saw some American soldiers in Slapton today; it’s the first time I’ve ever seen them. Everyone calls them Yanks, I don’t know why. Grandfather doesn’t like them, but I do. I think they’ve got smarter uniforms than ours and they look bigger somehow. They smiled a lot and waved – particularly at Mum, but that was just because she’s pretty, I could tell. When they whistled she went very red, but she liked it. They don’t say “hello”, they say “hi” instead, and one of them said “howdy”. He was the one who gave me a sweet, only he called it “candy”. I’m sucking it now as I’m writing. It’s nice, but not as nice as lemon sherberts or peppermint humbugs with the stripes and chewy centres. Humbugs are my best favourites, but I’m only allowed two a week now because of rationing. Mum says we’re really lucky living on the farm because we can grow our own vegetables, make our own milk and butter and cream and eat our own chickens. So when I complain about sweet rationing, which I do, she always gives me a little lecture on how lucky we are. Barry says they’ve got rationing for everything in London, so maybe Mum is right. Maybe we are lucky. But I still don’t see how me having less peppermint humbugs is going to help us win the war.
Mum got a letter from Dad today. Whenever she gets a letter she’s very happy and sad at the same time. She says he’s out in the desert in Africa with the Eighth Army and he’s making sure the lorries and the tanks work – he’s very good at engines, my dad. It’s very hot in the daytime, he says, but at night it’s cold enough to freeze your toes off. Mum let me read the letter after she had. He didn’t say anything about Tips and the kittens or the row we had. Maybe he’s forgotten all about it. I hope so.
I feel bad about writing this, but I must write what I really feel. What’s the point in writing at all otherwise? The truth is, I don’t really miss Dad like I know I should, like I know Mum does. When I’m actually reading his letters I miss him lots, but then later on I forget all about him unless someone talks about him, unless I see his photo maybe. Perhaps it’s because I’m still cross with him about the kittens. But it’s not just because of the kittens that I’m cross with him. The thing is, he didn’t need to go to fight in the war; he could have stayed with us and helped Grandfather and Mum on the farm. Other farmers were allowed to stay. He could have. But he didn’t. He tried to explain it to me before he joined up. He said he wouldn’t feel right about staying home when there were so many men going off to the war, men the same age as he was. I told him he should think of Grandfather and Mum and me, but he wouldn’t listen. They’ve got to do all the work on their own now, all the milking and the muck spreading, all the haymaking and the lambing. Dad was the only one who could fix his Fordson tractor and the thresher, and now he’s not here to do it. I help out a bit, but I’m not much use. I’m only twelve (almost anyway) and I’m off to school most days. He should be here with us, that’s what I think. I’m fed up with him being away. I’m fed up with this war. We’re not allowed down on the beach any more to fly our kites. There’s barbed wire all around it to keep us off, and there’s mines buried all over it. They’ve put horrible signs up everywhere warning us off. That wasn’t much use to Farmer Jeffrey’s smelly old one-eyed sheepdog that lifted his leg on everything he passed (including my leg once). He wandered on to the beach under the wire yesterday and blew himself up. Poor old thing.
I had this idea at school (probably because Bloomers was reading us the King Arthur stories). I think we should dress Churchill and Hitler up in armour like King Arthur’s knights, stick them on horses, give them a lance each and let them sort it out between them. Whoever is knocked off loses, and the war would be over and we could all go back to being normal again. Churchill would win of course, because Hitler looks too weak and feeble even to sit on a horse, let alone hold a lance. So we would win. No more rationing. All the humbugs I want. Dad could come home and everything would be like it was before. Everything would be tickety-boo.