Of Lions and Unicorns: A Lifetime of Tales from the Master Storyteller. Michael Morpurgo
was holding Mrs Pettigrew’s hand and patting it as the argument raged on. There’d be any number of new jobs, said one side. There are plenty of jobs anyway, said the other side. It would be a great concrete monstrosity; it would blight the whole landscape. It would be well screened by trees, well landscaped; you’d hardly notice it; and anyway you’d get used to it soon enough once it was there. It would be clean too, no chimneys, no smoke. But what if there was an accident, if the radiation leaked out? What then?
Suddenly Mrs Pettigrew was on her feet. Maybe it was because she didn’t speak for a while that everyone fell silent around her. When she did speak at last, her voice trembled. It trembled because she was trembling, her knuckles bone-white as she clutched Mother’s hand. I can still remember what she said, almost word for word.
“Since I first heard about this I have read many books. From these books I have learnt many important things. At the heart of an atomic power station there is a radioactive core. The energy this makes produces electricity. But this energy has to be used and controlled with very great care. Any mistake or any accident could cause this radioactive core to become unstable. This could lead to an explosion, which would be catastrophic, or there could be a leak of radiation into the atmosphere. Either of these would cause the greatest destruction to all forms of life, human beings, animals, birds, sea life and plants, for miles and miles around. But I am sure those who wish to build this power station have thought of all this and will make it as safe as possible. I am sure those who will operate it will be careful. But Arthur, my late husband, was careful too. He installed a simple generator for our home. He thought it was safe, but it killed him.
“So I ask you, gentlemen, to think again. Machines are not perfect. Science is not perfect. Mistakes can easily be made. Accidents can happen. I am sure you understand this. And there is something else I would like you to understand. For me the place where you would build your atomic power station is home. You may have decided it is an uninteresting place and unimportant, just home to one strange lady who lives there on the marsh with her donkey and her dogs and her hens. But it is not uninteresting and it is not unimportant. It is not just my home either, but home also for curlews and gulls and wild geese and teal and redshanks and barn owls and kestrels. There are herons, and larks. The otter lives here and the fox comes to visit, the badger too, even sometimes the deer. And amongst the marsh grass and reeds and the bulrushes live a thousand different insects, and a thousand different plants.
“My home is their home too and you have no right to destroy it. Arthur called the marsh a perfect paradise. But if you build your atomic power station there, then this paradise will be destroyed for ever. You will make a hell of paradise.”
Her voice gained ever greater strength as she spoke. Never before or since have I heard anyone speak with greater conviction.
“And I do mean for ever,” she went on. “Do not imagine that in fifty years, or a hundred maybe, when this power station will have served its purpose, when they find a new and better way to make electricity – which I am quite sure they will – do not imagine that they will be able to knock it down and clear it away and the marsh will be once again as it is now. From my books I know that no building as poisonous with radiation as this will be will ever be knocked down. To stop the poison leaking it will, I promise you, have to be enclosed in a tomb of concrete for hundreds of years to come. This they do not want to tell you, but it is true, believe me. Do not, I beg you, let them build this power station. Let us keep this marsh as it is. Let us keep our perfect paradise.”
As she sat down there was a ripple of applause, which swiftly became tumultuous. And as the hall rang loud with cheering and whistling and stamping I joined in more enthusiastically than any. At that moment I felt the entire village was united in defiance behind her. But the applause ended, as – all too soon – did both the defiance and the unity.
The decision to build or not to build seemed to take for ever: more public meetings, endless campaigning for and against; but right from the start it was clear to me that those for it were always in the ascendant. Mother stood firm alongside Mrs Pettigrew, so did the colonel and Mrs Parsons; but Miss Blackwell soon changed sides, as did lots of others. The arguments became ever more bitter. People who had been perfectly friendly until now would not even speak to one another. At school Bennie led an ever growing gang who would storm about at playtime punching their fists in the air and chanting slogans. “Down with the Pettigrew weeds!” they cried. “Down with the Pettigrew weeds!” To my shame I slunk away and avoided them all I could.
But in the face of this angry opposition Mother did not flinch and neither did Mrs Pettigrew. They sat side by side at every meeting, stood outside the village hall in the rain with their ever dwindling band of supporters, holding up their placards, SAY NO TO THE POWER STATION they read. Sometimes after school I stood there with her, but when people began to swear at us out of their car windows as they passed by, Mother said I had to stay away. I wasn’t sorry. It was boring to stand there, and cold too, in spite of the warmth of the brazier. And I was always terrified whenever Bennie saw me there, because I knew I’d be his special target in the playground the next day.
Eventually there were just the two of them left, Mother and Mrs Pettigrew. Mad Jack would join them sometimes, because he liked the company and he liked warming his hands over the brazier too. Things became even nastier towards the end. I came out of the house one morning to fin red paint daubed on our front door and on our Bramley apple tree, the one I used to climb; and someone – I always thought it must have been Bennie – threw a stone through one of Mrs Pettigrew’s windows in the middle of the night. Mother and Mrs Pettigrew did what they could to keep one another’s spirits up, but they could see the way it was going, so it must have been hard.
Then one day it was in the newspapers. The plans for the atomic power station had been approved. Building would begin in a few months. Mother cried a lot about it at home and I expect Mrs Pettigrew did too, but whenever I saw them together they always tried to be cheerful. Even after Mrs Pettigrew received the order that her beloved marsh was being compulsorily purchased and that she would have to move out, she refused to be downhearted. We’d go over there even more often towards the end to be with her, to help her in her garden with her bees and her hens and her vegetables. She was going to keep the place just as Arthur had liked it, she said, for as long as she possibly could.
Then Donkey died. We arrived one day to find Mrs Pettigrew sitting on the steps of her carriage, Donkey lying near her. We helped her dig the grave. It took hours. When Donkey had been buried we all sat on the steps in the half-dark, the dogs lying by Donkey’s grave. The sea sighed behind the sea wall, perfectly reflecting our spirits. I was lost in sadness.
“There’s a time to die,” said Mrs Pettigrew. “Perhaps she knew it was her time.” I never saw Mrs Pettigrew smile again.
I was there too on the day of the auction. Mrs Pettigrew didn’t have much to sell, but a lot of people came along all the same, out of curiosity or even a sense of malicious triumph, perhaps. The carriage had been emptied of everything – I’d carried some of it out myself – so that the whole garden was strewn with all her bits and pieces. It took just a couple of hours for the auctioneer to dispose of everything: all the garden tools, all the furniture, all the crockery, the generator, the stove, the pots and pans, the hens and the hen house and the beehives. She kept only her books and her dogs, and the railway carriage too. Several buyers wanted to make a bid for it, but she refused. She stood stony-faced throughout, Mother at her side, whilst I sat watching everything from the steps of the carriage, the dogs at my feet.
Neither Mother nor I had any idea what she was about to do. Evening was darkening around us, I remember. Just the three of us were left there. Everyone else had gone. Mother was leading Mrs Pettigrew away, a comforting arm round her, telling her again that she could stay with us in the village as long as she liked, as long as it took to find somewhere else to live. But Mrs Pettigrew didn’t appear to be listening at all. Suddenly she stopped, turned and walked away from us back towards the carriage.
“I won’t be long,” she said. And when the dogs tried to follow her she told them to sit where they were and stay.
She disappeared inside and I thought she was just saying goodbye to her home, but she wasn’t. She came out a few moments