Free Escape from Shangri-La by Michael Morpurgo Page A

time.
    â€˜She looks such a brave little boat,’ said my mother.
    â€˜She was,’ Popsicle replied. ‘Saved a lot of lives in her time.’
    â€˜You crewed on her, did you?’ my mother was delving, prying, and I wished she wouldn’t. ‘So you were a lifeboat-man, then?’ I expected Popsicle to clam up, but he didn’t, not this time.
    â€˜I wish I knew.’ He was looking out over the pond as he spoke. ‘I know that she was mine once, that’s all.’ He put an arm round my shoulder. ‘And now she’s yours, Cessie, all yours. You’ll take good care of her, won’t you? Course, you can let your dad play with her from time to time.’ He chuckled. ‘Look at him. Just like he was. Always loved boats, did your dad.’ My father was crouched down by the pond pointing the bow of the lifeboat right at us.
    â€˜Ready?’ he called out.
    â€˜Ready,’ said Popsicle.
    My father released the boat and then stood up to watch, hands on hips. He was beaming like a little boy.
    By now a dozen people or more had gathered around the pond to watch, Shirley Watson amongst them with her dog. Mandy Bethel was there too. The dog, a snuffling puggy-looking thing with pop eyes, yapped incessantly from the edge of the pond. That dog and Shirley Watson, I was thinking, they really suit each other.
    â€˜It’s mine. My grandad made it,’ I crowed. I knew as soon as I’d said it that I should have kept my mouth shut. The trouble was that I felt safe. Popsicle was nearby. My mother and father too. I felt suddenly brave, so I bragged on. ‘It’s called the
Lucie Alice
. It’s gotreal engines. It’s an exact replica of a 1939 lifeboat, a real one.’
    â€˜Kids’ stuff, if you ask me,’ Shirley Watson sneered.
    â€˜Well,’ I said, still full of bravado, ‘if you don’t like it, you don’t have to watch, do you?’
    Mandy Bethel gaped. She could not believe what she was hearing. Neither could I. No one spoke like that to Shirley Watson, no one in her right mind.
    Shirley Watson glared at me and stomped off in a fury. I knew, as I watched her go, that I had done something I would live to regret. I knew she was best not roused, not confronted, and I had done both. I knew there would be trouble.
    I soon discovered that Shirley Watson was putting it about at school that I had a crazy grandfather back at home, a drifter, a tramp, who wore his hair in a ponytail and looked like a pirate. That I could ignore, but there was worse to come – just looks at first, then whispers.
    Shirley Watson was spreading poison about Popsicle. She was telling everyone. He looked like a druggie, a weirdo. He was probably a dealer too, hanging around the park like he did. And she’d seen him talking to small children. It was a deliberate campaign of innuendo and gossip, and I hated her for it from the bottom of my heart.
    The mud was sticking. People were treating me differently. Some would not speak to me at all. I wanted to rise above it, to face them down, to be brave. I wanted to go out with Popsicle as often as I could, and be seen with him, just to show them exactly what I thought of them. And to begin with I really did try. But every time I went out with Popsicle, I was looking over my shoulder, dreading seeing anyone from school.
    Gradually my courage ebbed away, and I was cowed into staying at home. I had homework, it was raining, I had violin practice to do – any excuse to avoid bumping into that gaggle of sniggering tormentors in the park. I wasn’t proud of myself.
    Popsicle kept making minor adjustments to improve the
Lucie Alice
’s performance or her stability in the water. He had to test his refinements on the duckpond in the park. There wasn’t anywhere else. Luckily, there were long periods when he didn’t want to go there at all – whilst he was working on her on his bench in the garden