Postscript

Written by Will’s grandfather January 1st, 2009

I wish with my whole being that this story had never happened at all. But it did happen. And as it turned out, while it is a story that began with a tragedy, it has been in so many ways the most joyous, certainly the most important happening of my entire life, and that’s in over sixty-five years. We lost a dear son, then a wonderful daughter-in-law, and we very nearly lost Will too, our grandson. But miraculously he survived, and we found one another again. Out of sorrow can come sweetness.

Then almost as soon as we’d found him again, it seemed we might be losing him, this time for ever. Once he’d disappeared into the jungle with Oona that day, his grandmother and I could not bring ourselves to leave. We made a decision, as it turned out, the best decision of our lives, we think. The long and the short of it is that we went off home to England, back to Devon, for a couple of months to sell up the farm. Then we came back here to make our lives with Geraldine and her orphan orang-utans. We wanted to be as near as we could to Will.

Geraldine always said she was sure he’d be back, and she was right. Come back he did, and he does, bringing in orphaned orang-utans from the jungle so that they can be cared for here at the orphanage. His grandmother became a minder – she’s fostered three of them now, trained them up to go out into the jungle again, to be wild again. She’s on her fourth. She loves it, and she does a fine job of it too – she was always good with orphan lambs back on the farm. And as for me, I bury myself in all the administration and fundraising for the orphanage, working alongside Geraldine. This is home for us now.

Will comes back as and when he needs to. He’s over fifteen now, not a boy any more. Each time he comes, he stays for a few days, and tells us a little more about his great escape from the tsunami, and of the months he spent in the jungle with Oona. Some of it I could see he didn’t really want to talk about. I think it still hurt him too much. But bit by bit he told us more and more.

It wasn’t Will’s idea that his story should be told, it was Geraldine’s. We were all there sitting around one evening, chatting after supper and Scrabble, Will leaning up against Grandma’s knee, Oona’s eye looking in at the window as usual. “I’ve been thinking, Will,” Geraldine began. “I think your story should be told; written down, I mean. It should be put in a book so people can read it. It’s an important story, Will, a story everyone in the world should know, because it’s full of hope and determination. And we need that. Someone should write it. It would be a very different kind of a book, because the end is still being decided, and that’s because it’s a living story that’s still going on. The book could be part of its own story, so to speak, it could change how things turn out, how the story ends.”

“I think you should write it, Grandpa,” Will said. “You used to do a bit of writing, didn’t you?”

“Only a little weekly column for the local paper,” I told him. “I can’t write a book.”

“Course you can,” Grandma said, “you’re a good writer, and what’s more you’re the only one who can do it. I can’t write for toffee, and Will’s always coming and going on that elephant, so he can’t do it, can he? You know Will better than anyone, excepting that elephant perhaps. You know both the worlds he’s lived in, all the important people in his life. Go on, Grandpa, you can do it. Keep you out of mischief.”

I was warming to the idea all the time they were speaking, but still unsure of myself. “What d’you really think, Will?” I asked him. “It’s your story.”

“Go for it,” Will said, smiling up at me. “There’s no one else I’d want to do it. I’ll tell you everything you need to know, Grandpa, everything. Geraldine’s right, people have to know what’s going on out there in the jungle, before it’s too late. You tell them, Grandpa. But when you write it, I want you to be me, to tell my story as I lived it, as if you were me. Can you do that?”

“I can try,” I said.

Will looked up at Oona at the window.

“She speaks with her eyes, Grandpa. She says, write the book. Tell them how it was, how it is. She’s fine with it. So am I.”

I began writing the next morning.