Dear Olly (4 page)

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.”

First published by Collins in 2000

First published in paperback by HarperCollins
Children’s Books
2001

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FIRST EDITION

Text copyright © Michael Morpurgo 2000

Illustrations copyright © Christian Birmingham 2000

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