Free Escape from Shangri-La by Michael Morpurgo

more chirpy about the house than Popsicle. He was the whistling outside in the garden and the singing up in the bathroom. He was the life and soul of the place.
    Home was happier now than it ever had been, despite my father’s continuing coolness towards Popsicle. And atschool too life was proving unexpectedly good. Shirley Watson was back, but was ignoring me – so far. Things were set fair, I thought.
    These days, I noticed, Popsicle would often disappear into the new garden shed and lock himself in for hours on end. I asked him time and again what he was doing in there. ‘Tell you when I’m ready,’ he’d say, tapping his nose conspiratorially. ‘And you’re not to peek.’ I tried to peek of course, but he’d hung an old sack over the window. All I could see through a knot-hole low down in the door was a tray of onions on the floor. I was none the wiser.
    20th of October. My twelfth birthday. It was a Saturday. When I came down there were three wrapped presents waiting for me on the kitchen table. Everyone was sitting there and singing happy birthday. I opened the cards first and then attacked the presents. I had a CD of Yehudi Menuhin playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto from my father, and from my mother a video of
The Black Stallion
, my favourite film in all the world. I left Popsicle’s till last.
    â€˜Go careful,’ he said, as I tore the paper away. It was a shoe box, but it wasn’t shoes inside. It was a boat, a model boat, blue with a single yellow funnel. I took it out. It looked like some sort of a lifeboat, with loopingropes along the sides. Below the funnel a man stood at the huge steering-wheel. He was dressed in a yellow sou’wester and oils, and he really looked as if he was clinging to the wheel in the teeth of a gale. The name
Lucie Alice
was painted in red on the side of the boat.
    I put it down very gently beside the Grape Nuts in the middle of the table. I looked at Popsicle. ‘That was my boat,’ he said proudly. ‘The
Lucie Alice
.’
    â€˜Beautiful,’ my mother breathed. ‘Just beautiful.’
    â€˜You made it?’ I said. ‘In the shed?’ Popsicle nodded.
    â€˜Built in 1939 she was. Served at Lowestoft for thirty years. Reserve boat down in Exmouth after that. Know every plank of her, every nail. Don’t know why, but I do. She went to Dunkirk in 1940 too, in the war. Took hundreds of our lads off the beaches, she did.’
    â€˜Where is she now?’ my father asked.
    Popsicle got up suddenly from the table. ‘How should I know?’ he said. ‘I just made it, that’s all.’ I went after him and caught him by the arm before he reached the door.
    â€˜It’s lovely, Popsicle,’ I said. ‘Will it float? Can I float it in the bath, with Patsy?’
    â€˜In the bath! With Patsy!’ he laughed. ‘This is my lifeboat you’re talking about.’
    â€˜All right then. What about the pond? Could wefloat him out on the pond, in the park?’
    â€˜Not him,’ he said. ‘She’s a she. All boats are shes. She’ll float all right, but she’ll do a lot more than just float, you mark my words. She’s got engines. I’ve tried her out. She’s had her sea trials. Goes like the clappers, she does. And she’s unsinkable too. Got to be if she’s a lifeboat. You want to see?’
    â€˜Now?’
    â€˜Why not? We’ll all go, shall we?’
    The ducks were not at all pleased with us. They must have thought we’d come over with our usual offering of breadcrusts. Popsicle ignored all their raucous clamour, started the engines and set her chugging off across the pond on her maiden voyage. Transfixed, we all stood there and watched her, until Popsicle said that one of us had better run across the other side to catch her before she ran aground and got herself stuck in the mud. My father raced round. He was there just in