The Wreck of the Zanzibar
Read The Wreck of the Zanzibar Online
Authors: Michael Morpurgo
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Also by Michael Morpurgo
Arthur: High King of Britain
Escape from Shangri-La
Friend or Foe
From Hereabout Hill
The Ghost of Grania O'Malley
Kensuke's Kingdom
King of the Cloud Forests
Little Foxes
Long Way Home
Mr Nobody's Eyes
My Friend Walter
The Nine Lives of Montezuma
The Sandman and the Turtles
The Sleeping Sword
Twist of Gold
Waiting for Anya
War Horse
The War of Jenkins' Ear
The White Horse of Zennor
Why the Whales Came
For Younger Readers
Conker
Mairi's Mermaid
On Angel Wings
The Best Christmas Present in the World
The Marble Crusher
MICHAEL MORPURGO
First published in Great Britain in 1995 by Egmont Books LtdThis e-book edition published 2011 by Egmont UK Limited
239 Kensington High Street, London W8 6SA
Text Copyright 1995 Michael Morpurgo
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
ISBN 978 1 4052 3336 1
eBook ISBN 978 1 7803 1142 5
www.egmont.co.uk
www.michaelmorpurgo.org
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Group
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.
Table of Contents
To Marion, Keith, Daniel and Charlie
GREAT-AUNT LAURA
MY GREAT-AUNT LAURA DIED A FEW MONTHS ago. She was a hundred years old. She had her cocoa last thing at night, as she usually did, put the cat out, went to sleep and never woke up. There's not a better way to die.
I took the boat across to Scilly for the funeral â almost everyone in the family did. I met again cousins and aunts and uncles I hardly recognised, and who hardly recognised me. The little church on Bryher was packed, standing room only. Everyone on Bryher was there, and they came from all over the Scilly Isles, from St Mary's, St Martin's, St Agnes and Tresco.
We sang the hymns lustily because we knew
Great-aunt Laura would enjoy a rousing send-off. Afterwards we had a family gathering in her tiny cottage overlooking Stinking Porth Bay. There was tea and crusty brown bread and honey. I took one mouthful and I was a child again. Wanting to be on my own, I went up the narrow stairs to the room that had been mine when I came every summer for my holidays. The same oil lamp was by the bed, the same peeling wallpaper, the same faded curtains with the red sailing boats dipping through the waves.
I sat down on the bed and closed my eyes. I was eight years old again and ahead of me were two weeks of sand and sea and boats and shrimping, and oystercatchers and gannets, and Great-aunt Laura's stories every night before she drew the curtains against the moon and left me alone in my bed.
Someone called from downstairs and I was back to now.
Everyone was crowded into her sittingroom. There was a cardboard box open in the middle of the floor.
âAh, there you are, Michael,' said Uncle Will. He was a little irritated, I thought.
âWe'll begin then.'
And a hush fell around the room. He dipped into
the box and held up a parcel.
âIt looks as if she's left us one each,' said Uncle Will. Every parcel was wrapped in old newspaper and tied with string, and there was a large brown label attached to each one. Uncle Will read out the names. I had to wait some minutes for mine. There was nothing I particularly wanted, except Zanzibar of course, but then everyone wanted Zanzibar. Uncle Will was waving a parcel at me.
âMichael,' he said, âhere's yours.'
I took it upstairs and unwrapped it sitting on the bed. It felt like a book of some sort, and so it was, but not a printed book. It was handmade, handwritten in pencil, the pages sewn together. The title on the cover read
The Diary of Laura Perryman
and there was a watercolour painting on the cover of a four-masted ship keeling over in a storm and heading for the rocks. With the book there was an envelope.
I opened it and read.
Dear Michael
When you were little I told you lots and lots of stories about Bryher, about the Isles of Scilly. You know about the ghosts on Samson, about the bell that rings under the sea off St Martin's, about King Arthur still waiting in his cave under the Eastern Isles.
You remember? Well, here is my story, the story of me and my twin brother Billy whom you never knew. How I wish you had. It is a true story and I did not want it to die with me.
When I was young I kept a diary, not an everyday diary. I didn't write in it very often, just whenever I felt like it. Most of it isn't worth the reading and I've already thrown it away â I've lived an ordinary sort of life. But for a few months a long, long time ago, my life was not ordinary at all. This is the diary of those few months.
Do you remember you always used to ask where Zanzibar came from? (You called him âMarzipan' when you were small.) I never told you, did I? I never told anyone. Well, now you'll find out at last.
Goodbye, dear Michael, and God bless you.
Your Great-aunt Laura
P.S. I hope you like my little sketches. I'm a better artist than I am a writer, I think. When I come back in my next life â and I shall â I shall be a great artist. I've promised myself.
âLAURA PERRYMAN, YOU ARE FOURTEEN YEARS old today.'
I said that to the mirror this morning when I wished myself âHappy Birthday'. Sometimes, like this morning, I don't much want to be Laura Perryman, who's lived on Bryher all her life and milks cows. I want to be Lady Eugenia Fitzherbert with long red hair and green eyes, who wears a big wide hat with a white ostrich feather and who travels the world in steamships with four funnels. But then, I also want to be Billy Perryman so I can row out in the gig and build boats and run fast. Billy's fourteen too â being my twin brother, he
would be. But I'm not Lady Eugenia Fitzherbert, whoever she is, and I'm not Billy; I'm me. I'm Laura Perryman and I'm fourteen years old today.
