Long Way Home. Michael Morpurgo
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five pounds! I run this farm by myself, we’ve no other help . . .’
‘Dad, I didn’t mean it like that . . .’ But it was no use.
‘And it’s not as if you even put in a full two days, and every time I ask you to do anything extra, you gripe about it. Your mother and me, we . . .’
‘Dad, I was just asking, that’s all, just asking if you wanted me to move those calves.’ Tom felt his voice rising in anger and tried to control it. ‘Now, do you want me to move them or not?’
‘That’s not what it sounded like to me,’ his father said, retreating a bit.
‘Oh, do stop it, you two. Storme’s awake, you know – she’ll hear you,’ said Tom’s mother and she scuffled across the kitchen floor towards them with the teapot in one hand and a jug of milk in the other. ‘Pour yourselves a cup of tea and do eat your sausages, Tom; they’ll be cold.’
‘She’s heard us before, Mum,’ said Tom. ‘She’s used to it.’
Tom’s sister, Storme, thundered down the stairs, the kitchen door banged open and she came hopping in, pulling on a shoe that had come loose.
‘It’s today, isn’t it?’ she said, scraping back her chair.
‘What is dear?’ said her mother.
‘That boy, that foster boy,’ she said. ‘He’s coming today, isn’t he?’
‘Storme, I told you,’ her mother said, sitting down for the first time that morning. ‘I told you, you’re not to call him that. You call him by his name, and his name’s George.’
‘It’s not her fault, Mum,’ Tom said, stabbing at the sausage with his fork and looking for the softest place to make an incision. ‘Every summer I can remember we’ve had a foster child living with us, and they’ve all had different names.’
‘Well this one’s called George, and don’t you forget it,’ the newspaper said. The Prime Minister had his legs back again.
‘Why do we do it, Mum?’ Storme asked, scraping the last drop of milk from the bottom of her cereal bowl.
‘Do what, dear?’
‘Have all these foster children.’
‘I don’t really know, dear. I suppose it was your Auntie Helen who started it when she was a probation officer in Exeter – years ago now, before we had you. She suggested we might have a foster child out here for a few weeks in the summer – Anne was the first one, about your age now – and after that the habit just stuck. They wouldn’t get a holiday otherwise, you know.’
‘You don’t know how lucky you are,’ said her father.
‘Lucky!’ said Tom. ‘What about last year then? That girl Jenny, she wouldn’t talk to anyone but Mum, you only had to look at her and she’d cry and she never stopped fighting with Storme.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ his mother said.
‘Oh, come on, Mum, she was a bloody nuisance – you know she was.’
‘Tom!’
‘Well, she was,’ Tom said. ‘And what about the time she left the gate of the water-meadow open, “by mistake” she said, and let all the sheep out?’ Tom’s mother tried to pour herself another cup of tea. Tom watched as the tea trickled away to tea-leaves.
‘She was only young, Tom,’ she said quietly, ‘and a city girl at that.’ She filled the teapot, pulling her head away as the steam rose into her face. ‘And if I remember rightly,’ she went on, ‘it was you that left the tractor lights on all night last Saturday, wasn’t it?’ Tom knew she was right, but that just made him feel more resentful.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘Dad said we wouldn’t do it again after her.’
‘I said nothing of the kind,’ his father said, folding the newspaper. ‘I said we should choose more carefully next time, that’s all – someone older, more adaptable.’
‘And George is twelve, Tom,’ said his mother, ‘nearly your age. Mrs Thomas says he’s a nice boy – shy and quiet, but nice. He just hasn’t managed to settle anywhere.’ She was scraping off the jam Tom had left on the butter. That was something else Tom and his father were always quarrelling about: dirtying the butter. She hated it when they argued.
‘What’s “adaptable”?’ Storme asked, but no one answered her. She was used to that, so she tried again, pulling at her mother’s elbow. ‘Mum, Mum, what’s “adaptable” mean?’ But her mother wasn’t listening to her, and Storme wasn’t that interested anyway, so she gave up and went back to her sausage.
‘I wonder why though?’ Tom asked.
‘Why what?’ his mother said.
‘Why he didn’t settle anywhere else?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Tom’s mother said. ‘Mrs Thomas didn’t say.’
‘She wouldn’t, would she?’ Tom said.
‘Now what exactly do you mean by that?’ There was an edge to his father’s voice.
‘Well, if there was something wrong about him, she wouldn’t tell you, would she? You wouldn’t have him, would you?’ Tom looked deliberately at his mother. He was trying to avoid another confrontation with his father. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘she always sends us the worst cases, you know that. You’re the only ones that’ll take them.’
‘That’s enough, Tom,’ said his mother, but Tom ignored the plea in her voice. He didn’t want this George to stay in the house. There had been only one foster child he’d got on with, and he’d been taken away after two weeks because they’d found a permanent home for him somewhere else. The rest of them had just been a nuisance. George might be more his own age than most of them, but somehow that made it worse, not better.
‘I can tell you one thing,’ Tom said, pushing his sausage plate away. ‘I’m not going to look after him all the time, I can tell you that.’
‘Please, Tom!’ His mother was leaning towards him begging him to stop, but Tom couldn’t respond to her – it had gone too far already.
‘I’ve got better things to do,’ he said, and as he said it, he knew it sounded a challenge to his father.
‘Like working on the farm, I suppose. Moving calves, perhaps?’ His father was speaking quietly. Tom recognised the warning sign, but ignored it. It was his holiday they were interfering with and there was only one summer holiday each year.
‘I don’t want him here. I’ve got my own friends, haven’t I? He’ll just be in the way, and what’s more you never even asked me about it. It was all arranged between you and Dad and that Mrs Thomas. You’re not going to look after him, I am – and no one bothered to ask me, did they?’
‘That’s not fair, Tom.’ His mother sounded hurt, and Tom looked at her. She looked away and began piling up the plates, avoiding Tom with her eyes. ‘You know very well I asked you about having another one this summer, and you agreed – well, you said you didn’t mind anyway. Anyhow when Mrs Thomas rang up and told me about George, I had to say yes.’
He hadn’t meant to upset his mother and he didn’t want to go on, but he couldn’t bring himself to finish without a final gesture of protest. He scraped back his chair and stood up. And then his father took the wind out of his sails.
‘You’ve said enough.’ His father was glaring up at him. ‘You’re always saying that we treat you like a child. Just listen to yourself. You carry on like a six-year-old.’
‘When’s he coming?’ Storme asked, apparently oblivious of the anger on the other side of the table. It was a fortunately-timed question. Tom and his father were steamed up and ready for battle. Her mother took the