Free Alone on a Wide Wide Sea by Michael Morpurgo Page B

life ever since, to Ida and to those bushmen who brought us there, who must have sensed all along what we needed.
    She called it the Ark, and it didn’t take much to see why. The place was alive with every conceivable domestic animal: goats, sheep, a couple of pigs, a mournful-looking donkey called Barnaby, three milk cows and their calves, and of course, her entire family of wild creatures. The domestic animals all had names, but I only remember Barnaby and a cow called Poogly – not a name you easily forget.
    She didn’t give names to the wild ones, she said, because they were just passing through, except for one. Henry was a wombat. Henry, she said, was probably still asleep, and didn’t much like strangers. He’d been with her for seven years. He’dcome and just stayed. He lived in a hole under the verandah steps, and collected hats. In fact he stole hats, any hat he could find, which was why she kept her hat on all the time. Henry slept on his hoard of hats down there in his hole and was very happy, probably the happiest wombat in the entire world, she said, which wasn’t difficult, she added, because wombats generally are not the happiest of creatures.
    “You can have a look later for yourself,” she told us, “just don’t breathe in while you’re doing it. It’s horrible down there. Stinks to high heaven. Not a great one for personal hygiene, our Henry.”
    She introduced her entire menagerie of animals before she even introduced herself. She did that over a glorious breakfast of eggs, and toast and jam, and milk, which we wolfed down, still unable to take in our extraordinary turn of luck. She waited until every last crumb was gone, every last drop. We discovered soon that this was always the thing with her. She could sense intuitively the needs and fears of us all, of all her “children,” which is why, from the very first day, we always felt so at ease with her, why we came to love and trust her as we did, whether we were boys or joeys. She’d saved all of us. We didn’t love her because we owed her, but because of the kind of person she was.
    She wanted to hear our story. So Marty told her everything – he was always better at words than me. I watched her as she listened, saw the sadness and anger in her face. I could see she was older under her hat than I’d first imagined. When you’re young you can’t work out the age of an adult – they’re just quite old, old, or very old. She was old, and (I’m guessing now because I never asked her of course) about fifty-five. Her hair was long to the shoulders, and grey, going to white around her temples, and this belied the youth in her face. She was quick to smile, and when she did her whole being seemed to light up. She laughed easily too. I’ve forgotten so much about her, so much about everything, but I can hear her laugh still. It warmed me then. It warms me now when I think of it, because there was love in her laughter, never mockery, unless it was self-mockery. And there was a directness about the way she looked at you, and the way she spoke to you.
    “Well, you’ve told me your little tale,” she began, “so I’ll tell you mine. Then we’ll know one another better, won’t we?
    And so she told us who she was and what she was doing living there in the Ark with all her creatures around her, and Henry down his hat hole. We listened agog, because she wasa wonderful storyteller. She could paint pictures in your head with words, and she could touch the heart of you too.
    “Megs Molloy, that’s me – Margaret really – but Aunty Megs will be fine. Just call me that, everyone does. I do a little of everything, a bit of farming, write a bit of poetry – love that – and I make boats too in my shed, because Mick made boats. You’ll see photos of him about the place. He was my husband, but I lost him in the war, which was sad for me, but sadder still for him. His ship was sunk in some convoy, so he’s part of the seabed now. It’s as