The Classic Morpurgo Collection (six novels)

  Best Mate would lie there quite happily on the sofa for most of the day waiting to fetch Patrick home from school, longing for his daily run in the park. They’d walk together up to their favourite bench, right at the top of the park. From there Patrick could watch Best Mate run, whichever way he went. Once into his stride this “giraffe-dog” would be transformed into a “cheetah-dog,” and people would simply stand and stare as he streaked away into the distance. From time to time other dogs would try to chase him, try to keep up, but none of them had the speed nor the stamina to stay with him for long. He could outrun and outsmart all of them. He could jink like a gazelle, bound like a springbok. And Patrick was always waiting for him by the bench when he came back.

  Every time Patrick watched him run he could feel his whole body warming to the roots of his hair with the sheer thrill of it. And whenever Best Mate came haring back to him over the park, Patrick was filled with a surge of such pride and joy that he felt like whooping with exultation, which he very often did. Best Mate would stand at his side then resting for a while, leaning into him, his nose searching out Patrick’s hand for comfort and reassurance. But sooner or later he’d see a terrier scampering past, or a crow landing nearby, or a squirrel’s tail twitching in the grass, and he’d be off like a rocket again. Patrick knew it was the chase he loved best, but just the chase. He never used his great teeth for killing. They were for smiling with only, but the crows and the squirrels didn’t know that.

  More than once Mr Boots came up to the park to watch Best Mate go through his paces. He’d take photographs of him too, and Patrick didn’t like that. He thought Bossy Boots should ask him first, but he never did. Some of Patrick’s friends from school would be up there too sometimes, playing football, Jimmy Rington as well. But whenever Best Mate got into his stride, they’d very soon stop playing and just stand there and stare. Like Patrick, they would all be holding their breath in awe as Best Mate fairly flew over the ground. It was powerful, it was beautiful, it was wonderful.

  But the day it happened – Best Mate must have been about eighteen months old by now – the two of them were almost alone together in the park. That was because it was later than usual, almost evening by the time they got there. Patrick’s mum had made him stay in to finish his homework first. So Patrick wasn’t in a very good mood and grumbled about it to Best Mate all the way up the hill to the park. He cheered up though when he saw the swallows were back and skimming over the grass. He loved to watch them, and he knew Best Mate loved to chase them. So it was strange when, instead of taking off after them, Best Mate stayed by his side, looking up at him and licking his lips nervously.

  “Off you go, boy,” Patrick said. “What’s the matter with you? Go on! Go, go, go!”

  But Best Mate didn’t move. There was a low growl in the back of his throat, which was very unlike him. His ears were laid back on his head, and his whole body was trembling.

  “It’s all right,” Patrick told him, stroking his neck to calm him. “It’s just a little darker than usual, that’s all. Nothing to worry about. Lots of smells to chase. Off you go.” He bent down and kissed him on top of his head. “You’ll be fine, promise. Go on! Go, go, go!”

  Best Mate looked to him once more for reassurance. At that moment a swallow swooped down over their heads, and skimmed away over the grass – it was as if he was teasing Best Mate, taunting him. Best Mate didn’t hesitate. He was gone, gathering speed with every bounding stride, his neck straining, following the swallow’s every twist and turn. “You’re so beautiful,” Patrick breathed. Then he shouted it out so that the entire world could hear. “You’re beautiful! Beautiful!” He watched Best Mate racing away down the hill and then disappearing into the trees. It was the way he often went, his favourite run. He’d circle the lake at the bottom, scatter the ducks, scare the geese, and come running back through the trees, pounding up the hill towards Patrick. A few minutes later, Best Mate still hadn’t come back. That was a little unusual, but Patrick wasn’t worried. Best Mate might have got himself a bit lost in the gathering gloom, he thought. So he whistled for him, and called him. But he didn’t come and didn’t come, and now Patrick knew something had to be wrong. All his worst fears jostled in his head. Best Mate was wandering lost through the streets. He’d been run over, stolen, drowned, savaged by another dog, poisoned. However loud Patrick called and whistled no dog came running up the hill towards him through the dusk. He could hear no answering bark, only the distant roar of the traffic.

  So Patrick ran down the dark hill, following where Best Mate might have gone, through the trees, around the pond and back up the hill towards the bench, stopping every now and again to call for him and listen and look. He couldn’t whistle any more by now because he was crying too much. He saw no one in the park, no dogs, only shadowy ducks and geese cruising out on the dark water of the pond.

  Patrick realised then that he needed help. He ran all the way home. His mum and dad came at once. The three of them searched the park with torches all night long, called and called until they knew it was pointless to go on any longer. It was dawn by the time they got home, all of them hoping against hope that Best Mate had found his own way back. He hadn’t. Patrick sat at the bottom of the stairs with his head in his hands, while his dad phoned the Police. They took a description of Best Mate and said they would do their best to keep an eye out for him. They’d call back if they found him. No call came.

  A further search of the park by daylight only made things worse for Patrick. Everyone else’s dog was up there bounding around, scampering through the grass, fetching sticks and balls and frisbees. Patrick told everyone, asked everyone. No one had seen Best Mate. It was as if he had simply vanished off the face of the earth.

  Muzzled and caged in the back of a van, I had long hours to think about everything that had happened to me that evening on the park, about how stupid and gullible I had been to allow myself to get caught. And then there were more long, dark hours to remember how happy my life had been before I was so suddenly snatched away from everyone and everything I loved. The memories of it all kept repeating themselves in my head like a recurring nightmare I longed to wake from, but could not. I was trapped inside this nightmare, and could see no possible way of ever escaping from it.

  In the van there was pitch black all around me. I had no idea whether it was night or day, no idea where I was being taken, only that I was a prisoner, that with every hour that passed I was being driven further and further away from home and from Patrick. I had tried yelping and barking, tried scratching at the door. Now I lay there curled up in my misery, exhausted and dejected, the van shaking and rattling around me. I closed my eyes and tried to think myself home, to blot out the terror I was living through, tried to make myself believe that I was back on the sofa at home with Patrick, that none of this had happened. But that was when the nightmare would begin, and I would have to live through everything that had happened all over again.

  Patrick had finished his homework. He came over to the sofa and stroked me just where I liked it best, under my chest, which for some reason made one of my back legs kick out involuntarily. Patrick giggled. I think he loved doing it as much as I loved him doing it. Then he was putting my coat on me, and we were out of the warmth of the house and into the street, trotting together up the hill and through the gate to the park. This was the moment I longed for every day, to be out there with Patrick. Soon I’d be in the park and running, running, running, but I’d never set off till he gave me the word.

  Patrick always had to speak the words first. “Off you go, boy,” he’d whisper. “Go on! Go, go, go!” I didn’t really need telling. I was just waiting for him to say it. When I ran, I ran for the sheer pleasure of the chase, to feel the spring in my legs and the power surging through me, to feel the wind, to scatter the crows, to leave all the other dogs far behind me. But I ran for Patrick too, because I knew he was there watching me, and that the faster I ran the more he’d be loving it, and the more he loved it
, the more I did too. Coming out of the trees and back up the hill towards him I’d put on my best show, lengthening with every stride, because I could feel his pride in my running, and his love for me as I came up to him, as he smoothed my neck. That was the best moment of all, when both of us were jubilant together, exultant together.

  But this evening, I didn’t want to run. Even when he said the words I didn’t want to go. In the end I ran only because Patrick wanted me to. It wasn’t just the dark that worried me, though it’s true I’ve always been rather nervous of the dark. It was a feeling I had deep inside me that there was some kind of danger lurking out there in the park, that I’d be safer if I stayed with Patrick. Maybe it was also because there weren’t any other dogs about, I don’t know. I did wonder why they weren’t there. I did think too that running wouldn’t be so much fun without a dog or two to race against. I could chase the swallows, and I loved that, but it wasn’t quite the same. They weren’t company. Besides, I could never beat them. To be honest I never even got near them, but that didn’t stop me trying.

  Anyway, once I was off and into my running I forgot all that, forgot all my worries. I raced away from Patrick, away down the hill towards the pond. There were two men standing there beside a white van, and one of them I recognised at once. In fact I wasn’t at all surprised to see Mr Boots. He was often there on the heath watching me. I’d seen him a few times down by the pond just recently, another man with him. They’d be watching me through binoculars, like Patrick’s dad sometimes did.

  They were both there this time too, and this time, as he had once or twice before, Mr Boots whistled me over. I went because I liked him. I liked him because he always gave me a biscuit, and I can never resist biscuits. He’d never done me any harm. When I went up to him he patted me and I waited for my biscuit. He gave me one, but as I ate it he reached out suddenly, grabbed me by my collar, and held on to me. I thought that was odd, because he hadn’t done that before, and it all became stranger still when my head began to swim, and my legs buckled underneath me. I found myself lying down at his feet then, Mr Boots holding me fast on the ground, not that I could have struggled anyway. I had no strength left for that.

  “Don’t you worry,” Mr Boots was saying. “He’s right out of it. He couldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “You haven’t given him too much stuff, have you?” said the other voice.

  “‘Course not,” Mr Boots told him. “I know what I’m about, don’t I? He’ll be right as rain in an hour or two, you’ll see.”

  “He’d better be,” said the other. “I’m getting out of here before that ruddy kid comes looking for him.” He was undoing my collar now. “Here, you’d better lose this, chuck it in the pond. I won’t be needing his phone number, will I? Nor his name.”

  “What about my money?” Mr Boots asked. “£500 was the deal.”

  They argued loudly about it for some time. “£400, take it or leave it.”

  Then Mr Boots was shouting at him: “That’s robbery that is, daylight bleeding robbery!”

  “That’s rich coming from you, Bootsy,” said the other, “from a dog thief. And mind you get rid of that collar.”

  They were still arguing as they put a muzzle on me, tight, so tight that it hurt. I heard Mr Boots storming off, swearing and cursing as he went. Then I was dumped in the back of a van, and the door slammed after me. I drifted in and out of sleep for some time, I think, before waking up properly, before I really understood that my nightmare had been no dream, that everything was true, that I was not home again on the sofa with Patrick.

  It was not the cold nor the blackness all around me that frightened me most, that made me tremble and whimper as I lay there. It was the fear of the unknown that truly terrified me. Where was I being taken to? Why had they done this? What was going to happen to me? Would I ever see Patrick again?

  “Be Fast, Brighteyes, Be Very Fast”

  For Becky the only good days were when Craig wasn’t at home, and she wasn’t at school. So that Sunday morning had been a good day, so far, just her and her mother alone together, like it used to be three years ago, before they’d moved out of town and come to live out on the moor miles away from all her friends and so much that she had known and loved. It wasn’t that she didn’t like being in the countryside. She did, when Craig wasn’t there, and when she could get away on her own. She’d ride out on Red to the top of High Moor, galloping most of the way. Once up there she’d clamber up on the rocks and stand there leaning into the wind, revelling in it.

  This was her place, her rock, the only place she could talk to her father, tell him everything. His spirit was in the wind, she was sure of it, in the air she breathed up there, in the rocks themselves. He was as real to her as the wild moorland ponies, the browsing cattle and the shifting sheep. It was a place of rising larks and wheeling buzzards in the summer, of wind-buffeted crows in the winter. Whatever the season, Becky knew her father was always there with her, always listening, and that soothed, for a while at least, the aching loneliness inside her. And that was also why she loved being around the kennels with the greyhounds. They got her out of the house and away from Craig, and they were her friends too. They listened and they understood.

  Becky and her mother had been working together around the kennels all that morning, feeding the greyhounds and exercising them, bedding up the calves and the lambing ewes in the farm yard. They hadn’t argued at all, and that was because Craig was not around, and because they hadn’t even talked about him. If he wasn’t there and he wasn’t mentioned, they were fine together. Craig had left the night before in his van. He was going to fetch another dog, a top dog, a sure-fire champion, he said. So for a while at least Becky and her mother had been left to themselves. All the kennel work was done and the two of them were mucking out Red’s stable together. Becky was singing away to herself as she shook out the straw, while her mother tossed the hay up into the rack.

  “I wish you were always this happy,” said her mother.

  “I would be,” Becky replied, “if it wasn’t for him.”

  “If it wasn’t for him, Becky, we wouldn’t be here. You should remember that sometimes. We came from a pokey little room with a bathroom the size of a postage stamp – have you forgotten? And now we’ve got all this, the farmhouse, the moor, Red, the dogs, everything.”

  “So I suppose I have to be grateful, do I?” Becky could feel the anger in her rising. She tried to hold it back. “We were all right before, Mum, when there was just the two of us. We had all we needed.”

  “Listen, Becky, I really don’t want to argue with you,” said her mother. “I just want you to try a little harder to like him, for my sake. I mean, the minute he walks in you go out, and you hardly ever speak to him.”

  “That’s because I’ve got nothing to say.” Becky was tearful already. “Nothing he’d want to hear, anyway. I mean, what do you want me to do, Mum? Do you want me to tell him what I really think of him? Do you? ‘Listen up, Craig, you bully my mother, make her cook for you, clean for you, work like a slave on your farm – me too when I’m not at school – and you never do any work yourself. Tell me Craig, when did you last clean out the kennels? Oh yes, and another thing, why do you put me down all the time? Either I’m a “stroppy teenager” or a “spoilt brat,” or I’m “dressed up like a Barbie doll”. Excuse me, Craig, what business is it of yours, and how come you keep telling me what to do anyway? I mean just who do you think you are? You’re not my father.’”

  She paused for breath and calmed down a little. “Come on, Mum,” she went on. “You know all he thinks about is money and betting and racing his greyhounds. And do you know what? He doesn’t even like the dogs. And what’s more he doesn’t even want me to like them. He does all he can to stop me. ‘Don’t pet them,’ he says. ‘Bad for them,’ he says. ‘They’re racing dogs, athletes, not poodles, not pets.’ He just uses them up, Mum, and when they don’t make him any more money, when they don’t win, he just gets rid of them. I’ve t
ried, Mum. I really have. I just wish you’d never met him, that’s all. I don’t know what you see in him. I really don’t.”

  Becky knew her tirade had gone too far, that she’d spoilt the day, that it would make her mother cry, and that she’d hate herself later for making her unhappy again. But to her surprise, her mother didn’t cry this time. Instead she went very quiet.

  “You don’t understand,” said her mother after a while. “He was good to me, kind to me. We had fun together. I needed some fun.”

  “Didn’t last though, did it, Mum?”

  Her mother didn’t reply. For a few moments she just busied herself filling up the water buckets. Then she went on. “It’s not all bad though, is it, Becky? At least you’ve got the dogs. You love the dogs, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Well then. And we’ve still got each other. How does the song go? Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” And they both began to hum it together.

  Becky’s mother smiled across at her then, and Becky knew there was a lot she was saying in that smile, maybe that she didn’t entirely disagree with much of what Becky had said, but that she just couldn’t say it, not yet, maybe not ever. The dogs were suddenly barking from the kennels across the yard. That was when they both heard the van come crunching down the farm track, and rattle over the cattle grid into the yard. They looked at one another, and Becky knew then that her mum was dreading his return as much as she was. Craig was back.

  They looked on from the stable door as Craig slipped a choke-chain around the dog’s neck, and hauled him out of the back of the van – Craig was never gentle with his dogs. That was when he caught sight of them. “Well, what d’you think? Smart dog, eh? Looks the part, doesn’t he? He may be a bit small at the moment, but he’ll grow. He goes like the wind, I’m telling you. I got him cheap too. Few months time, and he could be as fast as Alfie, maybe faster.” The dog tried to escape, but Craig jerked on the chain and yanked him back. “Come here, you little beggar you! You see. He can’t wait to get running. It’s what he’s made for. You know what you’re looking at? A champion. I mean it. This one is the real thing. He is going to win and win. And that means money, lots of it. You’ll see.”