The Classic Morpurgo Collection. Michael Morpurgo
she might one day become too overexcited and blurt out our secret by mistake.
I took all the precautions I could, asking her to always check behind her before she climbed the stairs to our corridor, and I made it an absolute rule that she spoke in whispers whenever she came to see us. Those, it seemed, were the kind of rules she was quite happy with. Lizziebeth liked anything, I discovered, that involved some kind of conspiracy. It was during these long whispered conversations in my room that I got to know so much more about her. Actually, to begin with they weren’t conversations at all, not as such. They were more like monologues. Once Lizziebeth started one of her stories, there was no stopping her. “Do you know…” she’d begin, and on she’d go, on and on. She’d sit there cross-legged on the floor of my room with Kaspar on her lap and just talk and talk. And I’d be happy to listen, because she told me of a world I’d never seen inside before. For over a year now, ever since I’d left the orphanage, I’d served people like her at the Savoy; fetched and carried for them, polished their boots, brushed their coats, opened doors for them, bowed and scraped, as bell-boys have to do. But until now not one of them had ever really talked to me, unless they were snapping their fingers at me, or ordering me to do something.
It’s true that I wasn’t sure sometimes whether Lizziebeth was talking to me or to Kaspar. It didn’t much matter either way. Both of us would listen as entranced as the other, Kaspar gazing up into her eyes all the while, purring with pleasure, and me hanging on her every word.
Once she told us about the great ship she’d come over on from America, about the icebergs she’d seen, as tall as the skyscrapers in New York, which was where she lived, how one day when they were at sea she’d wandered off on her own to find somewhere to hide, and found herself right down below in the engine room. There was quite a kerfuffle, she said, because everyone thought she’d fallen overboard. When at last she was found and brought back to their cabin her mother had cried and cried, and called her “my little angel”, but her father had told her she was “the naughtiest girl in the whole world”. So she wasn’t sure what she was.
Afterwards they had taken her to the Captain of the ship who had a great, fat face and sad eyes, like a walrus she said, and they’d made her apologise for causing so much trouble to the crew who had been searching for her all over the ship for two hours before she was found, and to the Captain who’d had to stop the ship in mid-ocean, and had lookouts scanning the ocean with binoculars looking for her. She had to promise faithfully in front of the Captain never to go off on her own while they were on the ship. She promised with her fingers crossed behind her, she said, so it didn’t count. So when it got rough a day or two later and they were being tossed about in the biggest, greenest waves she’d ever seen, and everyone was as sick as dogs, she decided she’d do what one of the sailors had told her to do if it ever got rough, to go down to the very bottom of the ship where the boat doesn’t roll so much, and just lie down. The very bottom of the ship, she discovered, was full of cows and calves. So she lay down beside them in the straw, and that was where they found her, fast asleep, when the storm was over. This time they were both “mad” with her. So she was locked in the cabin as a punishment. She shrugged. “I didn’t care,” she told me. “Who gives a fig, anyway?”
Back at home in New York her governess was always sending her up to her room to make her do her writing all over again, or because her spelling wasn’t good enough. She was always being sent to her room by her mother too, for running around the house when she should walk, or making a noise when her father was working in his study. “I didn’t mind,” she said, with a shrug and a little laugh. “I didn’t give a fig, anyway.” In the holidays the family would sail up the coast to Maine in their three-masted yacht, which was called the Abe Lincoln, and they’d live in this big house on an island where there was no other house but theirs, and no one there except them, their guests and the servants. One day she decided to be a pirate, so she tied a spotted pirate’s scarf around her head and went off with a spade to look for buried treasure. And when they came calling for her she hid away in a cave, and she only came out when she was good and ready. She knew they’d be mad at her, but she really didn’t like anyone calling for her “like I was some kind of a dog”. So when she strolled back into the house that evening, she was sent straight up to bed without any dinner. “I didn’t want any dinner anyway,” she said, “so I didn’t give a fig, anyway, did I?”
Bit by bit, through these stories and dozens of others, I pieced together something of the lives of Lizziebeth and her family. I looked at them now with very different eyes whenever they walked by me on their way into breakfast, whenever I opened the door for them or wished them good morning. Lizziebeth would give me a great beaming smile whenever she saw me in the lobby, and Mr Freddie would wink at me from the front door, and sometimes he’d miaow softly as he passed me by. Such moments were enough to lift my spirits all day long. Life was suddenly good, and fun too. Kaspar was well again, we had both found a new friend, and our secret was safe. Everything was fine, or so I thought.
Everything after that seemed to happen suddenly, and in very quick succession. It was a quiet weekend at the hotel, with fewer guests around. There were no big dressy dinners, no grand balls, no smart parties. All of us who worked there preferred it like this, even if the days could drag a bit. Everyone was more relaxed. I liked the weekends anyway, because Kaspar and I usually saw more of Lizziebeth then. She’d be bored out of her mind downstairs, and would often sneak up to see Kaspar, sometimes three or four times a day, leaving me a note each time. I finished work earlier on a Sunday, so usually she’d be up there in my room with Kaspar, waiting for me when I got back. Sometimes she’d steal away some scones and cake, hiding them away in a napkin – she was always saying I was too thin and needed feeding up – and since I was always more than a little hungry after work, I didn’t argue with her.
We were sitting there one Sunday evening tucking into some delicious fruit cake, when I heard a voice in the corridor outside. Skullface! It was Skullface! She was talking to Mary O’Connell, and she was not in a good mood.
“That idiot boy, Johnny Trott, is he in?”
“I haven’t seen him, Mrs Blaise,” Mary told her. “Honest.”
The footsteps came closer and closer, the bunch of keys rattling louder with every step.
Skullface was ranting now. “Do you know what that he’s gone and done? Well, I’ll tell you, shall I? He’s only used a black brush on Lord Macauley’s best brown boots. There’s black all over them. And who gets the blame? Me. Well. I’ll have his guts for garters, I will. Where is he?”
“I don’t know, Mrs Blaise, honest to God I don’t.” Mary was doing her best for me.
The footsteps were right outside my door now, and there I was with Lizziebeth in my room, and Kaspar cleaning himself on her lap. All she had to do was to open the door and I’d get the sack for sure. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I was praying that somehow, anyhow, Mary would prevent her from opening that door. It was this very moment that Kaspar chose to stop washing his paws and spring out of Lizziebeth’s lap, yowling in his fury. It wasn’t his gentle miaow, this was his wailing war cry, and it was shrill and loud, horribly loud. For a moment or two there was silence outside the door. Then, “A cat! As I live and breathe, a cat!” cried Skullface. “Johnny Trott’s got a cat in his room! How dare he? How dare he? It’s against the rules, my rules!”
I looked aghast at Lizziebeth. Without a moment’s hesitation