Waiting for Anya. Michael Morpurgo
whether it was the war or whether it was Papa competing for his thoughts, Jo’s mind was always drawn back to the bear cub and the man he’d met in the woods on the day of the bear hunt. He had to know who he was, what he was hiding from and why he was waiting for Anya. Every passing day only intensified his longing to go back up to the Widow Horcada’s farm to find out what was going on and to see the bear cub again. But there was always work to be done, farm work, school work. It was difficult to get away – that was what he told himself anyway.
Grandpère took the sheep to the high pastures that summer. Jo was still too young, Maman said, to do it on his own and she didn’t want him missing any more school. ‘You only get your learning once,’ she said, and besides she needed him at home – there was the bracken to cut and to turn, or the hay to make; and at weekends there were the supplies to be taken up to Grandpère in the mountains and the cheeses brought back to be salted, stored and sold. The work was long and hard, but if Jo was honest with himself – and as time passed he had to be – he knew the work was an excuse. The fact was that he could not summon up the courage to go back to Widow Horcada’s farm. Every time he had seen her coming he’d hidden from her; and the one time he couldn’t avoid her, when she’d come into the grocer’s shop, he’d run out without buying what he went in there for. He hadn’t even dared to look her in the eye to see if she recognised him as the boy peering in through her window that evening.
Time and again he had looked up the hillside towards her farmhouse and had seen the Widow Horcada out in her fields, making her hay, milking her cow or driving her pigs, but there’d been no sign of anyone else. He was beginning to think he had imagined the whole thing.
Then one blustery Autumn day, after the sheep had come down from the pastures and he was spreading out the bracken for their bedding in the barn, he saw Widow Horcada scurrying past, black scarf over her head, flowers in her hand. He knew she’d be making for the churchyard to put flowers on her husband’s grave. She’d stop to do her shopping on the way back, she always did. Jo knew he had a clear half hour to get up there and back: he could do it if he hurried. She’d never see him, not if he was careful. Rouf tried to come with him as he always did. He shut him in the barn and shouted to Maman that he wouldn’t be long.
He kept under the cover of the trees as long as he could. From there he could see without being seen. Her pigs were foraging in the field below the house and the cow was lying curled asleep in the middle of them. There was no one about. He threw caution to the wind because he had to – there was no time for anything else. He hared across the field until he reached the safety of the barn wall where he knew he could not be seen from the house. He ran around the back of the barn and into the courtyard behind. There was no sound except for the contented grunting of rooting pigs. He was creeping past the barn door when he heard something shuffling around inside. The bear cub, it must be the bear cub.
He looked about him and then opened the door slowly. Like all the barns it was long and low and dark, with bracken on the floor and hay in the wooden rack that ran the length of the wall. But there was no bear cub, and no other animals either. Yet he was sure he’d heard something, quite sure. He pushed the door wide open so as to throw as much light as possible down the barn. There was one small dirty window at the far end, and the shutters were banging open and shut, first one and then the other. Jo peered into the darkness. He would go no further. He could see well enough from the doorway. He was turning to go when he trod on something. He bent down and picked up a shoe, a child’s shoe. The strap was broken. He thought little of it at first. He would have dropped it and left had he not heard the breathing – a regular wheezing breathing.
It came quite definitely from the hayrack about halfway down the barn. Jo took a few steps towards it and the breathing stopped. He thought of the bear cub and of the hibernation Monsieur Audap had told them about, but he thought that it couldn’t be the bear cub because it wasn’t winter yet and anyway a bear cub would hardly be sleeping in a hayrack – but then perhaps it would. He took a few more tentative steps forward and peered into the hay. The breathing began again a little further on and quite suddenly he found himself not looking at hay at all but at two eyes that stared back at him unblinking and terrified. Jo could do nothing for a moment but stare back into them. They were not the eyes of a bear for the face that went with them was pale and thin under a fringe of dark hair.
Jo backed away slowly, swallowing his fear. He had the presence of mind to close the door quietly and it was just as well he did for across the yard Widow Horcada was bent over, holding a bucket under an outdoor tap. She had her back to him and was humming quietly to herself. For a few moments he stood looking at her disbelieving. How could she be back so soon? It wasn’t possible. Yet there she was in front of him. She had only to turn round. It was just a few steps to the corner of the barn and safety. He’d make it if he could move silently. Without taking his eyes off her he began to inch his way along the wall.
He knew he should have looked where he was going. He told himself so as the fork he blundered into clattered to the ground. Jo looked at the Widow Horcada, the bucket fell out of her hand as the black shawl swung round. Jo dropped the shoe, stumbled over the fork and ran and ran. He rounded the corner of the barn, but there he was stopped in his tracks, for up the hill, a large basket in one hand, a stick in the other, came Widow Horcada. She looked up, saw him and shouted at him. He could not hear what she was saying. Jo turned again and ran back into the yard – it was the only way he could go. She was there too and coming towards him. He looked now from one to the other. Fear crept up his spine like a warm cat and he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. Never in all his life had he felt like screaming until this moment. He wanted to but he could not. And then one of them spoke, the one striding across the yard towards him.
‘It’s me.’ It was a man’s voice. ‘It’s me.’ And he pulled the shawl off his head. The red beard was longer than Jo remembered but it was the same man. ‘Don’t you remember me?’ he said.
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