Waiting for Anya. Michael Morpurgo
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the beard told them how they had walked to the top of the mountain and looked into Spain and how their legs ached. Papa had given them towels to dry themselves off. ‘Never grow a beard young man,’ the man had told him as he wiped his face. ‘You can never get it dry.’ Jo remembered Papa thanking them rather awkwardly and saying that no one had ever given him flowers before. They were already leaving before they introduced themselves. ‘I’m Madame Horcada’s son-in-law,’ he said shaking Papa’s hand, ‘and this is my daughter, Anya.’
Watching them walk away down the mountain Papa had told him the story of Widow Horcada’s daughter – Florence she was called. Jo thought he remembered seeing her in church once when he was little but he couldn’t be sure. She’d gone off to Paris Papa told him, run off some said, and got herself married. No one knew who to because she’d never brought him back to Lescun. ‘So that was the husband,’ said Papa. ‘Well I never.’
‘Where’s Widow Horcada’s daughter?’ Jo had asked.
‘Dead,’ said Papa. ‘Dead in childbirth I heard, and that must be the child. Poor little mite.’ Papa had kept the dead flowers all summer long on the shelf above his bed but they never spoke of the visitors again.
‘Foolhardy,’ said Widow Horcada, putting the knitting down on her lap. ‘Plain foolhardy, that’s what it was. I just don’t understand what came over you, Benjamin. Stay as long as it takes I said. Do what you have to do and I’ll help you all I can. We agreed, didn’t we? You promised you’d go out only at night. You promised me, didn’t you? And what do you do? You go out for a walk in broad daylight. A walk! And what do you bring back? Not berries, not herbs, not mushrooms, but an orphan bear cub. I ask you Benjamin, haven’t we got troubles enough?’ She leaned forward in her chair, her crooked finger pointing. ‘And that boy you met, what happens now, eh? You tell me that. What happens when he runs home and tells them all down in the village? Well, I’ll tell you. Someone will put two and two together and they’ll know the old widow’s son-in-law is back. They don’t forget a face you know, especially not your face. They may be country folk, Benjamin, but they’re not stupid.’
The man left the table and crouched down in front of her taking both her hands in his. ‘Believe me, Grandmère,’ he said, ‘the boy won’t say anything. I can always tell an honest face.’ He smiled up at her. ‘I know I’m not all you wanted in a son-in-law but I tell you true, you’re all I could ever have wanted in a mother-in-law.’
‘Go on with you,’ she said trying to push him away, but he held on to her hands.
‘No I mean it. You’re brave and you’re good and I couldn’t have done any of it without you. You know that.’
‘I don’t know anything,’ she said, ‘not any more I don’t. Maybe you’re right about that boy, maybe he won’t say anything. Let’s just pray to God you’re right.’
‘Your God or mine?’ said the man laughing.
‘Why not both?’ the widow said, ‘just in case one of us is barking up the wrong tree.’ She reached out and touched his face. ‘You’re all I’ve got left now Benjamin, you and little Anya – if she’s still alive.’
‘Course she is,’ said the man. ‘How many times do I have to tell you?’
‘You’ve been telling me for two years now,’ said the widow.
‘Two years, ten years,’ he said, ‘however long it takes. She’ll come. And when she does we’ll be waiting for her just like I promised her. She knows where to come and she’ll be here, you’ll see. She could walk in here tonight.’
Widow Horcada sighed and looked up at the window. ‘It’s getting dark,’ she said, starting up from her chair, ‘I’d better see to the animals.’ And then she saw him.
Jo felt the logs give under his feet. He tried to hold on to the window ledge but his fingers were cold and would not grip as they should. For a fleeting moment he saw their faces staring up at him and then he was falling in an avalanche of logs that sent him tumbling down on to the cobbled stone of the yard. He kicked frantically and pushed the logs away. Then he was on his feet and running before he heard the back door open. He dared not turn round and look. For the second time that day Jo found himself running down the slopes, but this time there was a misty darkness to hide him and he could afford to stop from time to time to regain his breath. Rouf ran on ahead of him and was waiting for him on his sack by the front doorstep. Jo had to step over him to open the door. Rouf yawned hugely and put his head on his paws. Clearly for him it had been no more than an ordinary day.
For some weeks after this the village was diverted, its spirits lifted by stories of the great bear hunt, stories that eclipsed even the grim news of the war, of more German victories everywhere. They heard about the world outside through newspapers that few people believed because they were controlled by the Germans, but also through Radio London and what you heard there had to be believed. There was no consolation to be gleaned from either source, so they talked of the bear hunt to forget the war and for a time they could do so.
At school Jo had become quite the hero and that was not entirely to his liking. If Jo had learned one lesson at school it was that it was better to keep a low profile – that way you kept out of trouble. But now he was thrust suddenly into the limelight. He had admirers and therefore enemies too. Even his best friend, Laurent, seemed to look at him differently. Only Monsieur Audap, his teacher, was quite unimpressed by the whole thing. Strict as he was, severe even at times, Monsieur Audap was scrupulously fair, and was liked and respected for it. A retiring man, he said very little, but what he did say was always worth listening to.
The day after Armand Jollet put up the bearskin on the wall of his grocer’s shop for all the world to admire, Monsieur Audap spent the entire morning telling the children all about the mountain bears, about where they lived and how they lived. After hibernation, he said, in the Spring when their body fat was low and they had young to feed, then they would dare anything to find food enough to provide for themselves and for their cubs. Bears, he said, never came close to people unless they had to. They knew of their cruelty, of their voracious appetite for killing and of their greed. Bears, he said, were neither stupid nor suicidal. This one must have been starving to have risked such an attack. Almost certainly, said Monsieur Audap, she had cubs to feed – usually there were two, maybe just one. They’d be dead by now, of course. They needed their mother’s milk for at least three or four months. Jo looked down at his desk so that his eyes would not betray him.
As time passed though the bear talk both in and out of school became less frequent and less triumphalist; and once again news of the war, of unending, depressing defeats began to preoccupy the village. But to many of the children, to Jo too, the war was still an unreal thing. In over two years of war they had not seen a single German soldier, no planes, no tanks, nothing. The war was in the talk and they heard plenty of that; and talk almost always meant argument. What should they do? Should they save what could be saved? Should they accept the finality of defeat and join Maréchal Pétain, or should they fight on with the English and join the French colonel, whose name Jo could never remember but who had broadcast from London that the war was not over, that the Germans could be beaten, must be beaten and would be beaten? And all the while they waited for the prisoners-of-war to come home and they didn’t. They waited for the Germans to come and they didn’t.
‘I just want it over with, Jo,’ Maman said. ‘I want your father home. I don’t care what it takes. I want it like it was before.’ And although Grandpère did not often argue with her openly, Jo knew what he thought. ‘That Colonel in London, that De Gaulle, he’s our only hope I tell you,’ Grandpère had told him. ‘Him and the English. I don’t like the English, never have done, but at least they’re fighting the Germans and anyone who is fighting them is a friend of France, that’s how I see it. And I should know, Jo, I fought them before, remember? We beat them then and we’ll beat them again. We’ve got to. There’ll be nothing left for you or for any of us if we don’t.’ What Jo thought about the war and about the occupation seemed to depend on whether he had just talked to Maman or to Grandpère: he could never make up his mind.
Jo