The Classic Morpurgo Collection. Michael Morpurgo
And all the while, she listened wide-eyed.
That last week together, things changed between Lizziebeth and me. From the moment we were sitting up on that roof holding hands, and sharing our fear, she was no longer a little rich girl from America, and I wasn’t a fourteen-year-old orphan from London. We had become proper friends, the best of friends. She no longer gabbled on all the time about herself, or about Kaspar, as she had when I’d first known her. She asked questions, and she wanted answers. “We haven’t got much more time together,” she said one morning, “so you have to tell me everything, because I want to remember everything about you and about Kaspar for ever and ever.”
She’d bring me new drawings every day, of her house in New York, of the Statue of Liberty, of her island home in Maine, of her dressed as a pirate, of her with Kaspar, of me in my uniform, but mostly of Kaspar: Kaspar sleeping, Kaspar sitting, Kaspar hunting. But as the day for her to leave came ever closer, we became more silent together, more sad together. She would hug Kaspar close all the time she was with us in my room, and I could feel her wanting to stretch every minute into an hour, into a week, into a month. I wanted the same.
It was on the last evening that she first suggested the idea. She was cradling Kaspar, rocking him gently, her head buried in his neck, when suddenly she looked up at me, her eyes filled with tears.
“You could come, Johnny. You and Kaspar, you could come with us. We could go on the ship together. You could come and live in New York. You’d love it. I know you would. And in America you wouldn’t have to be a bell-boy. In America you can be whatever you want to be, that’s what Papa says. It’s the land of the free. You could be President of the United States. Anyone could be. Please come, Johnny, please come.” As she was talking I felt a sudden hope surging inside me at the prospect of a new and exciting life across the ocean, in America, but immediately I could see how impossible it was.
“I can’t, Lizziebeth,” I said. “I mean I couldn’t even pay for my passage…”
“What about the money?” she replied. “What about the money my father gave you?”
I told her everything, all about how Skullface had blackmailed me. I hadn’t intended to. It just came pouring out.
Lizziebeth was silent for a while.
“She’s a witch,” she said finally, “and I hate her.” Then she brightened suddenly. “I could ask Papa,” she went on. “He’s got a lot of money. He could pay for your passage.”
“No,” I told her firmly. “I don’t want money from him.”
She looked hurt and crestfallen at this, and I wished at once I hadn’t spoken so directly. “You don’t want to come, do you?” She said.
“I do,” I told her. “I really do. I don’t want to be carrying luggage and polishing shoes all my life, do I? And I’d love to go across to America in that big ship you drew for me – what was it called again?”
“Titanic,” Lizziebeth said, in tears now. “We’re going early in the morning. We’ve got to go by train first, Ma says, before we can get to the ship. You could come with us. You could come and see us off. And you could bring Kaspar.”
“I suppose I could see the ship then, couldn’t I?” I said, but I knew even as I spoke that I was grasping at straws. “It’s no good, Lizziebeth. Skullface wouldn’t let me have a day off work. I know she wouldn’t. I’d really like to see the Titanic too. Is it really the biggest ship in the world?”
“And the fastest,” she said, getting up suddenly and handing me Kaspar. “I’m going to speak to Papa. You saved my life didn’t you? I’m going to ask him, and I’m going to tell him about Skullface too.”
She was out of my room and gone before I could stop her.
The very same day, only a few hours later, Skullface was seen walking grimfaced out of the tradesmen’s entrance with her suitcase, “never to return”, as Mr Freddie told me with a smile all over his face.
But I never saw my money again. The next morning I found myself sitting in a first class train carriage with the Stanton family on the way to Southampton. The manager had told me that he’d had a special request from Mr Stanton that Kaspar and I be allowed to accompany the family to Southampton, and help them with their luggage on board ship. He said that considering recent events, and how I had enhanced the good name of the hotel, he was happy this one time to let me go. But I would be on duty, he reminded me. I had to wear my Savoy uniform, carry all their trunks and bags on board, and see to their every need until the ship sailed.
In among the luggage I carried out of the hotel that day was a picnic basket Mary O’Connell had “borrowed” from the stores. Inside the basket was Kaspar. He yowled all the way down in the lift, wailed all the way across the lobby, past Mr Freddie, who lifted his hat to him in farewell. He only stopped his complaining once we were in the cab, when Lizziebeth took him out and cradled him in her arms. That was when she began telling her mother and father the whole story of our secret, of how we’d met, all about Kaspar and me, and the Countess Kandinsky, and my orphanage, and Harry the cockroach and Mr Wellington, and how I’d run away. One story flowed into the next, my whole life story and Kaspar’s in a torrent of words that tumbled over one another in her excitement to tell the whole thing. She hardly paused for breath until we got to the station.
Kaspar sat on Lizziebeth’s lap all the way down on the train to Southampton. It was for the most part a silent journey, because Lizziebeth slept and so did Kasper.
I shall never forget my first sighting of the Titanic. She seemed to dwarf the entire dockside. As I went up the gangplank carrying the Stantons’ trunks, Lizziebeth in front of me carrying Kaspar in the picnic basket, the band was playing on the quayside, and there were crowds of people everywhere, spectators on shore and passengers all along the railings, high excitement and anticipation on every face. I was agog with it all. Twice or three times I went back and forth to their cabin – deck C, number 52. I’ve never forgotten the number. Their cabin was at least as spacious as their rooms at the Savoy, and just as luxurious. I was bowled over by the palatial splendour of everything I saw, by the sheer enormity of the ship, both inside and out. It was grander and more magnificent than I could ever have imagined.
The time came when I’d carried all their trunks up to their cabin, and I knew the moment for parting had come. Lizziebeth knew it too. Sitting on the sofa, she said her last goodbye to Kaspar, burying her face in his neck and sobbing her heart out. Her father took the cat from her as gently as he could and put him back in the picnic basket. It was as he was doing this that I decided. It had never even occurred to me until that moment.
“Lizziebeth,” I said, “I want you to take him with you to America.”
“You mean it?” she cried. “You really mean it?”
“I mean it,” I told her.
Lizziebeth turned to her mother and father. “I can, can’t I, Ma? Please Papa. Say yes, please.”
Neither objected. On the contrary, they looked delighted.
Each of them shook me by the hand. They were still reserved, but I saw a genuine