Love, Matt
Matt was ready and waiting for Olly when they came up to see him a couple of days later. The steps outside the hospital were difficult, but once down on the grass he walked towards her with scarcely a limp, just as he had promised himself he would. He was leaning slightly to one side perhaps and he still needed his stick, but for Matt it was the most triumphant walk of his life. He even managed to stay on his feet when Olly threw herself into his arms.
When all the hugging was over and done, the three of them went to sit down on a bench in the spring sunshine and feasted on hot dogs. Afterwards, he introduced Peg to Olly. “Well, Peg,” he said, “this is my little sister. You can kick her whenever you like. Have a look, Olly.” Olly lifted up his trouser leg to look. “See?” Matt went on. “She’s a lot nicer than my other one. No horrible hairs.”
Shortly after this, Matt came home at last. He didn’t want any fuss, he said, no grand welcome. So they kept it all very quiet. But in those first days back home, the visitors, mostly relatives, came and went almost constantly. Matt clowned his way through it all—it was the only way he could deal with it. Gaunty Bethel was particularly horrified when Matt rolled up his trouser leg to show her. “Love me, love my Peg,’ was one of his lines. And then his worst joke of all, “Meet the new bionic Matt, a leg-end in his own lifetime.” He could see Olly was uncomfortable with his black humour. In one of their quieter moments he did try to explain it to her. “If I didn’t laugh about it, Olly, I’d cry. And I’m telling you, I’ve done enough of that for a lifetime.”
Matt had imagined the worst of it was over, but it wasn’t. Back in the hospital everyone had had one limb or another missing. No-one had been any different. But now, every day, he had to endure the averted eyes, the hushed admiration, the endless sympathy. Gaunty was the worst. “If I hear her telling Mum just once more how wonderful I am,” he told Olly, “I’ll bop her with my crutches. Honestly I will.”
He so much wanted to live a normal existence again, and to forget about his leg, but it wouldn’t heal quickly enough to let him. He hated the exercises he had to do for hours every day to strengthen his muscles. He knew they had to be done, but he loathed every minute of them. There were doctors’ visits, nurses’ visits and the dreaded trips back to hospital for check-ups as an outpatient. None of this helped Matt to forget. He began to sink into sadness. He even stopped writing to the orphanage. It pained him even to think of the life he’d had to abandon. He felt himself giving up, losing interest, giving in to despair, and he could do nothing about it.
Olly was the only one he really wanted to be with because she treated him just as she always had. He walked her to school each morning—with a stick to help him, he could just about manage it there and back—and was often there to meet her when she came out. They were on their way back home one afternoon when Olly first noticed the swallows flitting about over the treetops.
“Look, Matt, they’re back! They’re back!” she cried. “Maybe Hero’s come back, too. Oh I hope so, I hope so.”
Matt knew all about Hero—Olly had told him the story again and again, and he understood just how much Olly had been looking forward to his return.
“We’ll get the garage ready for him,” Matt said. So once more, the car was banished to the street.
But in the days that followed no swallows came to the garage, although there were plenty about. Everyone was on constant lookout for Hero, for a swallow with a scarlet ring. Matt busied himself in the evenings making a ladder with broader steps so that he could get himself up into the hide and be there when Hero came back. And so Matt and Olly were there in the hide when a pair of swallows did fly into the garage and begin to build again in the very same place as the year before. But neither had a scarlet ring. Matt tried his best to soften the bitterness of Olly’s disappointment. “Perhaps he’s just gone somewhere else,” he said, and he told her again about the swallows he’d seen flying around the orphanage back in Rwanda and how they had reminded him of home. “I came home, didn’t I?” he said. “So will Hero. You’ll see.”
The nest grew by the day, a meticulous miracle of a nest, the parent birds dipping down into muddy puddles, flying in and out, building incessantly. Matt was up there almost all day, every day, watching, guarding, photographing. The eggs hatched and the begging beaks appeared, four of them. For Matt, this was the first time since his accident he could lose himself in something completely. When he was up in his hide he was able to forget his leg entirely. With every passing day now he grew stronger. He felt the shadows of despair lifting, and was more and more at peace with himself.
One afternoon, he turned up to meet Olly at school, for the very first time with no walking stick, his eyes bright with excitement. “Well?” he said, holding out his arms and pirouetting proudly.
Olly played at being unimpressed. “So you can walk on two legs,” she teased. “What’s so great?” Then she hugged him tight. “Clever Peg,” she said. “Clever you.”
“There’s something else I’ve got to tell you and it’s even better,” Matt went on. “Come on, I’ll show you when we get home.”
He took her at once up into the hide. “Watch,” he said. “Keep your eye on that one, the father. You watch him when he perches.” It was some time before either of the parent birds took a rest from feeding the young. When at long last one of them did, Matt whispered, “You see? The father bird, he can’t use his right leg. Look at him. He’s like me.”
“So?” said Olly.
“Well, he manages, doesn’t he?” Matt went on. “One leg or not, he’s flown all the way here, and come the autumn he’s going to fly all the way back again. And that’s just what I’m going to do. I’m going back, Olly, back to Africa.”
“Not for a while, please,” said Olly.
“Not for a while, Olly,” he replied. “Not till the swallows fly.”
Preview
“Mobility is a human right; mobility is a birthright.”
The Jaipur Limb Campaign is working in partnership with the Mozambique Red Cross Society and has set up a rehabilitation centre in Gaza Province to help people who have lost limbs because of landmines. The JLC is also supporting four organisations in India to build rehabilitation centres and provide professional training for more staff to help people who have lost limbs and who are suffering from the effects of polio.
A donation has been made by HarperCollins Publishers to the Jaipur Limb Campaign, in recognition of its important work.
For more information, contact the Jaipur Limb Campaign, 11 Goodwin Street,
London, N4 3HQ
020 7272 9501 (tel), 020 7272 9544 (fax)
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Bean & Nick
C.B.
By Michael Morpurgo
Alone on a Wide Wide Sea
The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips
Private Peaceful
Cool!
The Dancing Bear
Farm Boy
Dear Olly
Billy the Kid
Toro! Toro!
The Butterfly Lion
For Younger Readers
Mr Skip
Jigger’s Day Off
Picture Books
The Gentle Giant
Wombat Goes Walkabout
Audio
Alone on a Wide Wide Sea (read by Emelia Fox and Tim Pigott-Smith)
The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips (read by Jenny Agutter and Michael Morpurgo)
Private Peaceful (read by Jamie Glover)
Kensuke’s Kingdom (read by Derek Jacobi)
Dear Olly (read by Paul McGann)
Out of the Ashes (read by Sophie Aldred)
The Butterfly Lion (read by Virginia McKenna and Michael Morpurgo)
Billy the Kid (read by Richard Attenborough)
Farm Boy (read by Derek Jacobi and Michael Morpurgo)
Copyright
First published by Collins in 2000
First published in paperback by HarperCo
llins Children’s Books 2001
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is www.harpercollins.co.uk
FIRST EDITION
Text copyright © Michael Morpurgo 2000
Illustrations copyright © Christian Birmingham 2000
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EPub Edition © MAY 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-37584-4
The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as author and illustrator of this work.
Conditions of Sale
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Michael Morpurgo, Dear Olly
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