The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips. Michael Morpurgo

      I first read Grandma’s letter over ten years ago, when I was twelve. It was the kind of letter you don’t forget. I remember I read it over and over again to be sure I’d understood it right. Soon everyone else at home had read it too.

      “Well, I’m gobsmacked,” my father said.

      “She’s unbelievable,” said my mother.

      Grandma rang up later that evening. “Boowie? Is that you, dear? It’s Grandma here.”

      It was Grandma who had first called me Boowie. Apparently Boowie was the first “word” she ever heard me speak. My real name is Michael, but she’s never called me that.

      “You’ve read it then?” she went on.

      “Yes, Grandma. Is it true – all of it?”

      “Of course it is,” she said, with a distant echoing chuckle. “Blame it on the cat if you like, Boowie. But remember one thing, dear: only dead fish swim with the flow, and I’m not a dead fish yet, not by a long chalk.”

      So it was true, all of it. She’d really gone and done it. I felt like whooping and cheering, like jumping up and down for joy. But everyone else still looked as if they were in a state of shock. All day, aunties and uncles and cousins had been turning up and there’d been lots of tutting and shaking of heads and mutterings.

      “What does she think she’s doing?”

      “And at her age!”

      “Grandpa’s only been dead a few months.”

      “Barely cold in his grave.”

      And, to be fair, Grandpa had only been dead a few months: five months and two weeks to be precise.

      It had rained cats and dogs all through the funeral service, so loud you could hardly hear the organ sometimes. I remember some baby began crying and had to be taken out. I sat next to Grandma in the front pew, right beside the coffin. Grandma’s hand was trembling, and when I looked up at her she smiled and squeezed my arm to tell me she was all right. But I knew she wasn’t, so I held her hand. Afterwards we walked down the aisle together behind the coffin, holding on tightly to one another.

      Then we were standing under her umbrella by the graveside and watching them lower the coffin, the vicar’s words whipped away by the wind before they could ever be heard. I remember I tried hard to feel sad, but I couldn’t, and not because I didn’t love Grandpa. I did. But he had been ill with multiple sclerosis for ten years or more, and that was most of my life. So I’d never felt I’d known him that well. When I was little he’d sit by my bed and read stories to me. Later I did the same for him. Sometimes it was all he could do to smile. In the end, when he was really bad, Grandma had to do almost everything for him. She even had to interpret what he was trying to say to me because I couldn’t understand any more. In the last few holidays I spent down at Slapton I could see the suffering in his eyes. He hated being the way he was, and he hated me seeing the way he was too. So when I heard he’d died I was sad for Grandma, of course – they’d been married for over forty years. But in a way I was glad it was finished, for her and for him.

      After the burial was over we walked back together along the lane to the pub for the wake, Grandma still clutching my hand. I didn’t feel I should say anything to her in case I disturbed her thoughts. So I left her alone.

      We were walking under the bridge, the pub already in sight, when she spoke at last. “He’s out of it now, Boowie,” she said, “and out of that wheelchair too. God, how he hated that wheelchair. He’ll be happy again now. You should’ve seen him before, Boowie. You should have known him like I knew him. Strapping great fellow he was, and gentle too, always kind. He tried to stay kind, right to the end. We used to laugh in the early days – how we used to laugh. That was the worst of it in a way; he just stopped laughing a long time ago, when he first got ill. That’s why I always loved having you to stay, Boowie. You reminded me of how he had been when he was young. You were always laughing, just like he used to in the old days, and that made me feel good. It made Grandpa feel good too. I know it did.”

      This wasn’t like Grandma at all. Normally with Grandma I was the one who did the talking. She never said much, she just listened. I’d confided in her all my life. I don’t know why, but I found I could always talk to her easily, much more easily than with anyone at home. Back home, people were always busy. Whenever I talked to them I’d feel I was interrupting something. With Grandma I knew I had her total attention. She made me feel I was the only person in the world who mattered to her.

      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 had 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, as 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