Such Stuff: A Story-Maker's Inspiration

  Voluntary societies engaged in child deportation were given UK government sanction and support. The Australian government also provided subsidies. Australia was desperate to expand its workforce, wanting – in its words – “good white stock”. The Bishop of Perth stated in 1938: “… it is necessary to look for external sources of supply. And if we do not supply from our own stock we are exposed to the menace of the teeming millions of our neighbouring Asiatic races.”

  In the days before telephones, computers and world travel, children shipped overseas were permanently separated from everyone and everything they knew. When they reached Australia, they were housed in residential schools, or with host families, until they were of employment age. They experienced a harsh climate, long hours of hard physical work, loneliness, lost identities and the pain of living with a family but not being of the family.

  In 1956, British officials went to Australia to investigate. Their conclusions were damning. One home was described as isolated with “deplorable conditions”, and the boys “appeared unhappy”. Accommodation at another was “primitive”, with managers “rigid and narrow in outlook”. Although ten of the worst places were blacklisted, more children were sent to them while the government debated what to do with the damning report.

  The scale of deportation was later brought to light by a Nottinghamshire social worker, Margaret Humphreys. She set up the Child Migrants Trust in 1987 to assist separated families, and to pressurize governments to investigate. Many former child migrants began to draw public attention to their distressing experiences. Their pain, hurt and anger was clear.

  Although a few migrants did exceptionally well, all experienced trauma and many were abused. Tony Jones was told by the Church of England that he was an orphan. He wasn’t. The authorities assured him there were no records. That was another lie. His mother was too poor to look after him and placed him in a children’s home. She did not consent to his deportation; indeed, she was never asked. Tony arranged a reunion, but his mother died two weeks before he arrived: “I saw my mother in the coffin. It’s the most heartbreaking time of my life. They knew she was alive.”

  Tony Costa said, “I still wake during the night in a cold sweat, in a state of night terror featuring the monsters of my childhood – though it was never any kind of childhood. I was desperately trying to understand what crime I had committed to warrant such a heinous punishment.”

  Child-care charities and governments finally started to condemn what they had once so enthusiastically endorsed. In 2009, the Australian prime minister apologized: “Sorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where so often you were abused. Sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love, of tenderness, of care. We look back with shame that so many of you were left cold, hungry and alone, and with nowhere to hide and nobody to turn to.” Sometime later, the British prime minister also apologized. The work of reconciling lost children with their families overseas still continues but will soon end as those affected are now so old.

  Kaspar: Prince of Cats

  THE DREAM

  Odd things happen in life, if you allow them to. I like odd. Like many writers and illustrators and storytellers, I often get invited to talk or read at festivals, or teach creative writing for a week somewhere, or go into schools on World Book Day. And sometimes I get asked to be “writer in residence” somewhere, in a museum, art gallery or college maybe – I have done it at Tate Britain, for instance. Over weeks and months, you give a series of master-classes or lectures, readings or tutorials, all designed to encourage those who come along to write themselves. I enjoy it because it makes me think again about the process of writing and to be excited by it, to find new ways myself, it encourages me, and if it does that, my hope is that it encourages the students. And if I am honest, I enjoy the opportunity of reading my stories out loud, performing them.

  In recent years, I have found myself performing more and more, giving concerts, with readings and music of my stories, stories such as The Mozart Question, War Horse, Private Peaceful, The Best Christmas Present in the World and On Angel Wings. Stories become alive for me when I read them out loud, and reading becomes performing. There are so many ways of telling tales, reading them, performing them, dramatizing them, filming them. Each is a new and vibrant way of storytelling, and I love to be involved. It is what my stories were written for: the telling as much as the reading. More, maybe.

  It is rare for a writer to witness at first hand the effect of a story on an audience, for reading is usually done privately – unseen, unwitnessed. But telling it out to an audience is the great test, and – when it works – the great joy. When a story resonates, when that silence and stillness falls and we all live the story together, writer and teller and listener, then that’s all the reward I need.

  Some while ago now, I was asked to be writer in residence at a hotel in London, the Savoy Hotel on the Strand. It’s rather grand, and huge, and very, very posh. Come and live in the hotel, they said, for three months, and give a talk or a reading or a concert from time to time. With my wife? I asked. Yes, they said. Free? I asked. Yes, they said. For the previous twenty-five years Clare and I had been living deep in the Devon countryside, totally immersed in our work on the farm, and we had just retired from our daily duties – just reached that age. Why not? we thought. We’ll get to know London again. It’ll be another way of living for a while. The last time we had spent any time in London was when I was a student. And I would be living just down the road from King’s, my old college. We could go to the theatre, concerts, galleries, walk along the Thames. And it was the Savoy, for goodness’ sake!

  I never had any idea when we walked in there with our luggage that first day that I would find a story in this place. Mind you, my nose was probably twitching, my antennae out, ready to receive. We had an enormous room, a bed the size of Devon, and everyone was kindness itself. We were royally treated. But I very soon realized that the hotel, frequented over the decades by the powerful and the famous – Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe, millionaires and billionaires from all over the world, queen bees, king bees, honeybees all – was run by a small army of worker bees. The doormen, the receptionists, the bellboys, the porters, the cleaners, the cooks and waiters, waitresses, the managers – they were all there to look after the guests, to make them feel special. And they did. They came, I soon discovered, from all over the world – I counted over thirty countries. Some were students, studying full-time and working every hour they could find, to pay for their studies and to send money home. Others were full-time at the hotel, had been at the Savoy for years, knew how it all worked. And all were well trained and highly professional. However, I discovered that they were not, in general, very well paid. Whereas the people they were looking after were among the richest in the world. This hotel was, I was thinking, a microcosm of the world outside, where the gap between the rich and poor had scarcely narrowed in a hundred years.

  We lived in this bubble, enjoying all the pampering – up to a point – certainly enjoying arranging literary evenings, giving concerts and talks. I remember a teatime event for families when I interviewed the wonderful Judith Kerr (The Tiger Who Came to Tea, the Mog series, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit). She was of an age to remember how the world was in 1930s Berlin and London. It was a rare insight into those times. But interesting though these events were, and fun though it was to have your bed turned down for you each night, to have clean white towels fresh every day, we soon longed for home, for muddy wellies, and hayfields, and for swallows skimming over them! So back and forth we went, from the farm in Devon, a simple life of simple pleasures, to the Savoy, a sumptuous life of sumptuous pleasures. But very soon, I had the beginnings of a story in my head, a small but strong fire was burning there. A cat story. Here’s why.

  One day, the manager at the Savoy introduced me to what he called the mascot of the hotel, a rather beautiful and elegant sculpture of a black cat.
He was called Kaspar. And he was kept on show in the hotel lobby. Had we not been introduced, I don’t know whether Kaspar and I would ever have met. “You like stories, don’t you?” the manager said. “I shall tell you Kaspar’s story. And it’s true, every word.” Now, I especially like true stories, so I listened. “Well,” he began, “it happened a long while ago, more than a hundred years ago now. A meeting was held here, of businessmen, in one of the rooms we have for such things. Thirteen men came to this meeting – the usual thing: lots of talk-talk, food, drink, cigars and more talk-talk. Right at the end of the meeting, one of the old businessmen looked around the table and suddenly said, ‘Don’t much like the look of this. Just realized, there’s thirteen of us sitting here. Unlucky number.’”

  “They all laughed at this, but it was a nervous laugh. Everyone knew you shouldn’t walk under ladders, that magpies are unlucky and that you don’t sit down at a table with thirteen people. Then another old duffer scoffed, ‘What an utter load of old superstitious nonsense. Clap-trap. Cobblers. Tish-tosh.’ And they all agreed and there was more nervous laughter. The meeting broke up and off they all went. The old duffer headed straight for Southampton, to catch the ship for South Africa. A few months later, after an uneventful sailing, he was in Johannesburg, just walking down the street, when someone came up to him and shot him. When word got back to the Savoy Hotel about this terrible happening, they decided they had to do something about it. They made a rule that never again would they have a meeting around a table with just thirteen people there. They would insist that if there were going to be thirteen, they would always put out a fourteenth chair, and in the fourteenth chair they would sit a lucky black cat. Not a live one, of course, but one sculpted by a great Italian artist out of black ebony. So that’s what was arranged. And that’s why Kaspar’s here.”

  He took me to see Kaspar. I stroked him, looked into his eyes. He seemed rather disdainful, superior – a prince of cats, I thought, and he knows it, not cuddly, but rather independent, his own master. He sat there so dignified, so self-assured, his tail curled like a question mark. “Why Kaspar?” I asked. “Who knows?” The manager shrugged. “Maybe that’s for you to find out when you write your story about him.” “Is that what I’m going to do?” I asked. “Probably,” he replied. And he was right. I was.

  But I had no idea what it would be about at all until one morning in the hotel when I went down to breakfast. I was on my own, I remember. Often, Clare takes a little longer in the morning than I do. I was coming down the wide staircase towards the breakfast room, taking my time, when I happened to look up. I think until that moment I had taken the opulence of the Savoy almost for granted. It is so overwhelming that otherwise you would spend all your time gawping at it. Everywhere there are glittering, sparkling chandeliers, wall paintings, lush, deep carpets, ornately framed pictures, huge gilded mirrors. In the end, you stopped looking. It was just too much, too glitzy, too glamorous, and had begun to make me feel quite uncomfortable. I had by now discovered that when you go through the doors where the waiters and waitresses go, into the hidden working areas where the worker bees hurry back and forth, the hidden behind is rather gloomy and shabby and grim, a huge contrast to this world of extravagance.

  Anyway, I was standing on those steps looking down into the magnificence of the breakfast room, when I was suddenly reminded of a black and white photograph I had seen of a dining room just like this, the same grandeur, the same over-the-top decor. It took me a few moments to remember where I had seen this photograph. Then I remembered. It was in a book I had read about the Titanic, the fastest, most luxurious ship the world had ever known, where the rich lived in first class in great opulence, while the poor and the crew lived in steerage below decks in quite a different world. This dining room at the Savoy was to me the dining room for the first-class passengers on the Titanic, and I was walking down into it. Ahead, I could see the passengers, the waiters bustling about, serving their every need, and out of the window beyond, the sun was shining on water – not seawater, of course, but the Thames. A bellboy passed me on the steps, with a cheery, “Good morning, sir.”

  As I sat there at my table moments later, I knew that bellboy would be the hero of my story, that this would be his story, his and Kaspar’s. Somehow, some way, they would end up on the Titanic, they would both survive that terrible tragedy in which 1,500 died, rich and poor alike, and then I would find a way for Kaspar to come back to the Savoy, where he belonged. I began to dream my story. It took me a while, but I did it. And I loved doing it.

  By the way, Kaspar is still there, in the lobby at the Savoy. You just ask the man in the top hat at the door if you can go in and meet Kaspar. He’ll let you in. He’s kind; they all are at the Savoy. You can stand there and stroke Kaspar, tell him you know his story, all about Johnny Trott, the bellboy, and the Titanic, all about how he came home again. He’d like that. And so would I.

  KASPAR: PRINCE OF CATS

  My fellow stokers ribbed me mercilessly from time to time, for I was the baby among them. I didn’t mind. They ribbed the little Japanese man too till they discovered that, small though he was, he could shovel more coal than any of us. He was called Michiya, but we called him Little Mitch – and he was little, littler even than me. Maybe because we had been fellow stowaways, or maybe because we were both about the same size, he became quite a friend.

  He spoke no English at all, so we conversed in gestures and smiles. We managed to make ourselves well enough understood. Like the rest of them I was black from head to toe after every shift. But Captain Smith was true to his word, we were all well enough looked after. We had plenty of hot water to wash ourselves clean, we had all the food we could eat and a warm bunk to sleep in. I didn’t go up on deck that much. It was a long way up, and when I did have an hour or two off I found I was just too tired to do anything much except sleep. Down there in the bowels of the ship I didn’t know if it was night or day – and I didn’t much care either. It was just work, sleep, eat, work, sleep, eat. I was too tired even to dream.

  When I did go up on deck I looked out on a moonlit sea, or a sunlit sea, that was always as flat as a pond and shining. I never saw another ship, just the wide horizons. Occasionally there were birds soaring over the decks, and once to everyone’s great excitement we spotted dozens of leaping dolphins. I had never known such beauty. Every time I went up on deck though, I was drawn towards the First Class part of the ship. I’d stay there by the rail for a while, hoping against hope I might see Lizziebeth come walking by with Kaspar on his lead.

  But I never saw them. I thought of them though as I shovelled and sweated, as I lay in my bunk in between shifts, as I looked over that glassy sea. I kept trying to summon up the courage to climb over the railings and find my way again back to their cabin. I longed to see the look of surprise on Lizziebeth’s face when she saw I was on board. I knew how pleased she’d be to see me, that Kaspar would swish his tail and smile up at me. But about Lizziebeth’s mother and father I couldn’t be at all sure. The truth is that I still believed they would think badly of me for stowing away as I had.

  I decided that it would be better to wait until we got to New York, and then I’d just walk up to them all and surprise them on the quayside. I’d tell them then and there that I’d taken Lizziebeth’s advice and come to live in America, in the land of the free. They’d never need to know I’d stowed away.

  I was half sleeping, half dreaming in my bunk, dreaming that Kaspar was yowling at me, trying to wake me. We were in some kind of danger and he was trying to warn me. Then it happened. The ship suddenly shuddered and shook. I sat up. Right away it felt to me like some kind of a collision, and I could tell it had happened on the starboard side. A long silence followed. Then I heard a great rushing and roaring of escaping steam, like a death rattle. I knew something had gone terribly wrong, that the ship had been wounded. The engines had stopped.

  Half a dozen of us got dressed at once and rushed up to the third deck, the boat d
eck. We all expected to see the ship we had collided with, because that was what we thought had happened. But we could see nothing, no ship, nothing but the stars and an empty sea all around. There was no one else on deck except us. It was as if no one else had felt it, as if it had all been a bad dream. No one else had woken, so it followed that nothing had happened. I was almost beginning to believe I had imagined the whole thing, when I saw Little Mitch come rushing along the deck towards us carrying something in both hands. It was a huge piece of ice shaped like a giant tooth, jagged and sharp. He was shouting the same thing over and over again, but I couldn’t understand him, none of us could. Then one of the other stokers said it. “Iceberg! It’s off an iceberg! We’ve only gone and hit a flaming iceberg!”

  The Titanic

  The Titanic, built in Belfast for the White Star Line, was the world’s largest passenger ship at the time of her launch in 1912. Late on 14 April, five days into her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, she struck an iceberg a glancing blow and went down two hours and forty minutes later. She only had enough lifeboats for one-third of her passengers. One thousand five hundred people drowned in the freezing cold North Atlantic.

  Seventeen-year-old Jack Thayer was one of about forty lucky survivors who were plucked from the sea. The shouts from those thrown into the icy water swelled, he said, into “one long continuous wailing chant. This terrible cry lasted for twenty or thirty minutes, gradually dying away, as one after another could no longer withstand the cold and exposure…” According to the survivors, those in the lifeboats neglected their duty. Jack later complained: “The most heartrending part of the whole tragedy was the failure of those boats which were only partially loaded, to pick up the poor souls in the water. There they were, listening to the cries, and still they did not come back. If they had turned back several hundred more would have been saved.”