Giraffe head portrait on a calf

You will not believe me, so I am writing it down while the animal is still in the paddock and the men from the docks have stopped gawping. The giraffe came up the gangway at Avonmouth on Tuesday with its head bent under the rigging, as if it were ashamed of being so tall. Mr Pell wanted to load it straight onto the cart, but the mare panicked at the spots and we spent the afternoon with a bucket of molasses and a great deal of shouting.

Its name, according to the manifest, is Sultana, though the sailors called her Madam and the carter called her worse. She has the longest lashes I have ever seen on anything, and she looks at you sideways through them, slow and considering, the way a magistrate looks at a poor man who has told a clever lie. Her ears are big soft leaves. The spots on her neck run down like the markings on a map of rivers, darker where the light cannot reach them.

Last night I stood by the fence until the lamp guttered. She lowered her head and breathed warm across my face, and for a moment the whole yard went quiet: the gulls, the pump, Pell's dog. I thought of the ship, six weeks of her swaying above the deck, and I understood she had been looking over the water the entire way, the only one aboard who could see what was coming.

Write soon, and tell Mother I have not fallen in the harbour.

Yours, Will