The Classic Morpurgo Collection (six novels)
Her mother tried her best to intervene on Becky’s behalf, but that only made things worse. “There you go again,” he was yelling at her mother now. “Always taking her side, letting her do what she likes. That’s why she’s like she is, can’t you see? Her dad may have let her run wild and do what she liked. But this is my house and I make the rules here. She knows the rules. No dogs in the house. I’ve told her often enough, haven’t I? And what does she do? She goes and sneaks them in when our backs are turned. And I wouldn’t mind betting this isn’t the first time either. If she wants to live here, she does what I say, simple as that. Are you hearing me, Becky?”
Becky looked him right in the eye. Anger gave her the courage she needed to answer him back. “I don’t want to live here,” she shouted at him, “I never did. I hate this house, and I hate you. And if you want me to sleep in the kennels with the dogs, that’s fine. I’ll sleep in the kennels. I’m not bothered. I don’t mind. See if I care.” And without another word she slammed out of the house, Alfie and Brighteyes following her across the yard.
A little later her mother came out and tried to persuade her to come back inside the house, to patch things up, and say sorry to Craig. But Becky wouldn’t do it.
“I didn’t think so,” said her mother sadly, “which is why I’ve brought you out your duvet and a pillow.”
So Becky spent that night curled up with the dogs at the back of their kennel, covered in her duvet and sharing a pillow with Brighteyes. And whenever Becky woke, which was often, he’d be there, awake and looking straight back at her. It was Brighteyes who helped her through the night, soothed her anger, and kept her warm.
The bitterness of that row blew over in the end, as all the others had. But the memory of it added to the growing residue of cold resentment between them. Despite all Becky’s mother tried to do to maintain some kind of peace between them, the house became more and more a place of sullen silence. When she wasn’t at school Becky spent as much time as she could up on the moor with Red and the two dogs, riding each time further and further away from the farm. Time and again she thought of riding off with them and never coming back. It was only the thought of how much it would upset her mother that prevented her from actually doing it.
But of course, whether she liked it or not, the three of them were still thrown together on the evenings when they went off to the dog races. For a while Alfie and Brighteyes kept on winning, one or other of them, regularly enough. But Becky could see, as everyone could, that things were gradually changing. More and more it was Brighteyes who was replacing Alfie as the favourite down at the dog track. He was unquestionably on his way to becoming top dog. Everywhere they went now the cameras were on him, and the bets were on him too.
The two dogs were still just as inseparable as ever, off the track and on it, only now it was Brighteyes who almost always came in first, with Alfie a whisker behind. Alfie was definitely off the pace these days, getting older, everyone said, not past it but certainly past his best. No one could deny he was as eager as ever. His speed out of the traps was electric. In full stride he was still magnificent, but his stamina was failing him. He was having to strain every muscle and sinew to stay with Brighteyes, who, as everyone could plainly see, was coming into his prime.
Down at the track Craig was king of the castle, top trainer, and revelling triumphantly in every moment of it. So long as one of his two champion dogs came first and the other came in second, so long as the prize money was still coming in, and the trophies too, that was all that mattered to Craig. For Becky though every race was a torment. She could see that Alfie was not the dog he had been. He was too tired. He was too old. Every time he ran, she thought it might be his last.
Becky was there at the track the evening Alfie broke down. He looked fine as she led him around the enclosure, full of himself and up on his toes. He was the first out of the traps, as usual, kept tight around the bend and powered ahead, with Brighteyes just behind, but moving up alongside him. It looked to Becky, and to everyone else, like another double win, another one-two. The only question was which of them would finish first. All the other dogs were out of it. Then, with no warning whatever, Alfie simply stopped running, slowed to a limping walk and stood there panting under the glare of the lights, as every other dog streaked by him.
Brighteyes had run on for a few paces when it happened. But then, as he found himself suddenly alone, he slowed, stopped and looked about him. He saw Alfie standing there alone on the track and came running back towards him. The two famous champions stood side by side on the track, bewildered and alarmed, but still together. By the time Becky had vaulted over the barrier fence on to the track and was running over to them, the whole crowd had fallen silent in the stands. They knew, as Becky did, that they were witnessing the end of a greyhound racing legend, that they had just seen the great Alfie run his last race.
The vet confirmed what everyone already suspected, that a bone in one of Alfie’s hocks had broken. There was nothing that could be done. He might be able to run but he would never race again.
No one spoke in the van on the way home that night. Becky sat in the back with the dogs as usual, with Alfie’s head on her lap. She waited until they got back later that night, until they were having a cup of tea in the kitchen, before she said anything. Still no one spoke. She’d been thinking about it all the way home. She had made up her mind to swallow her pride and beg.
“I’ve never asked you for anything before, have I, Craig?” she began. Craig didn’t say anything. He just sat there stirring his tea and gazing into it morosely. “It’s about Alfie. I’d really like to keep him. I mean, he’s won you all that money, all those cups. He’s run his heart out for you every time he’s raced, hasn’t he? And Brighteyes… if Alfie goes, it’ll break his heart, and if he’s unhappy then he’ll never run his best, will he? I know him. Please Craig, I’ll look after him. I promise I will.”
The look on Craig’s face was as scathing as the tone of his voice. “So now it’s ‘please Craig’ all of a sudden, is it? That makes a change, I suppose. Well let me tell you something for nothing: a racing dog is only worth keeping as long as he can win. You heard what that vet said. Alfie’s not even going to be able to race again, let alone win. So he goes, just like the others. He’s no different. I run a racing kennels here, right? I don’t run a dog’s rest home for lame greyhounds. So stop your whinging. He goes. Tomorrow. And there’s an end to it.”
“He’ll go to a good home, Becky. It’s all right,” her mother said. “They all go to good homes, don’t they, Craig?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Craig muttered. He took a sip of his tea, then banged the mug down on the table. “There’s no sugar in this,” he shouted. “You know I always have sugar.” Becky’s mother, now clearly upset, pushed the sugar bowl towards him. He spooned the sugar in and stirred it. When he looked up, he saw both of them looking back at him waiting for a proper answer. “Of course they do,” he snapped. “Good homes, all of them. I’ve told you, haven’t I?”
“Please. Just this once.” Becky would not give up. “Please, Craig. I’ll never ask for anything ever again. Let me keep him please.”
Craig drank his tea and said nothing for a while. “All right,” he replied at last, “I’ll think about it.”
Becky’s mother reached out and put her hand on his. “Thank you,” she said, “from both of us.” She looked hard at Becky.
“Yes. Thank you,” Becky mumbled. It was hardly convincing, but it was the best she was prepared to do.
Early the next morning Becky saddled up Red in the yard for their morning ride. She wanted to take Alfie and Brighteyes with her as usual, but she could see that Alfie was still carrying his bad leg, hardly able to limp across the kennel. She knew Brighteyes wouldn’t want to come without him, so she decided to leave them both behind.
She led Red over to their kennel and crouched down beside them. “It’s all right, Alfie,” she told him. “I’ve fixed it with Craig. You’re stay
ing. No one’s going to take you away. And as soon as your leg’s better you can come for a run on the moor. All right?” She smoothed his head and left them. As she rode out of the yard, she turned and saw them both standing there looking after her.
She could tell that Red wasn’t happy without the dogs there. He kept stopping, lifting his head and whinnying for them, so it took her much longer than usual to get up to High Moor. She sat on her rock and told her father everything that had happened, how she’d bring the dogs up to see him again once Alfie was fit. Then, as she was talking, a strange thing happened. A white barn owl came floating out of nowhere, like a passing spirit. She flew away down the valley, harried all the way by a pair of cawing crows. Becky had never before seen a barn owl out in broad daylight like this. A shiver of dread came over her, and she knew it wasn’t the cold. She felt it was an omen of some kind, a warning, even a premonition of evil. She mounted up at once and rode hard all the way home.
As she came down off the hill behind the farmhouse Becky heard an engine starting up in the yard below. She recognised it as the engine of a Land Rover. She feared the worst at once, and knew now for sure what the barn owl had been telling her. She saw the battered Land Rover rattling up the track away from the farmyard, and heard from inside it the unmistakable sound of Alfie barking, of Alfie scrabbling at the door in his terror.
As Becky came riding into the yard Brighteyes was up on his hind legs, frantic to get out, yelping and whining. He was alone in his kennel.
Becky didn’t confront Craig. She knew that it was too late, that there was no point. It gave her some satisfaction to hear from inside the house the sound of her mother at last standing up to Craig, telling him exactly what she thought of him, but for Becky it was no great comfort. It was too little and too late. She didn’t go into the house at all, but spent the rest of the day in the kennel with Brighteyes where she knew she was needed. He was just like he had been when he’d first arrived. He was trembling violently. All day he wouldn’t eat and he wouldn’t drink, but stood with his head through the bars of the kennel, looking for Alfie, waiting for him.
By the time Becky rode out with Brighteyes the next morning, she still had not managed to get him to eat anything, and he’d drunk next to nothing either. Without Alfie there, Brighteyes never once raced ahead, never bounded away through the bracken like a deer. He loped alongside Becky and Red, his head hanging, all the spring gone from his step. Once up on High Moor he whined wistfully as he looked all about him. Then he came over and sat down beside Becky, his head laid on his paws. He never looked up at her, not once, as if he could not bear to, as if he felt she had betrayed him. She talked to him, stroked him, tried to comfort and reassure him, but he was inconsolable.
“Mum wouldn’t lie to me,” Becky told him. “So it must be like she said. He’s gone to a good home. Alfie’s fine. I know he is.”
Brighteyes looked up at her then, and she knew absolutely that he did not believe her, that he knew something she didn’t know, something dreadful and unthinkable, something he was desperately trying to tell her. Quite suddenly, as she was looking into his eyes, she understood. “It’ll be me next,” he was telling her. “I can’t run without Alfie, and if I can’t race I can’t win. And if I can’t win, they’ll take me away just like Alfie.”
She cried, throwing her arms around him. “I won’t let them take you, not ever. I promise you I won’t. I promise.” She rocked him gently, burying her face in his neck. “We’ll stay together, you and me. No matter what. No matter what.”
Becky wanted to stay out on the moor and ride as far as she could, for as long as the light lasted. Before she left High Moor she called out a goodbye to her father, as she always did. Where she rode that afternoon she did not know, and she did not care. She just rode. With Brighteyes beside her, she followed a tumbling stream from the pool on High Moor, along a rock-strewn track through a forest of stunted oak trees into a valley of scattered boulders and soggy marshland, until they came at last on to a narrow track with rushy fields on either side.
She could see in the distance now a ramshackle farmstead, a glowering place, where the mists hung over the fields, as if hiding some terrible secret. It looked deserted. She was in two minds as to whether she should go on or not, until she saw a chimney and smoke rising from it. Then from somewhere she heard a radio playing. Intrigued but still wary, she walked Red on past a field strewn with long abandoned farm machinery. Crows were perched there, dozens of them, and all were watching her silently as she passed.
Becky could see no one, but she sensed danger in this desolate place, and so did Brighteyes. His whole body tensed, his ears pricked. Then Becky saw the Land Rover parked outside the farmhouse, a battered grey Land Rover, just like the one that came to take away the dogs, that had taken Alfie away the day before. A gunshot rang out from beyond the farm buildings. Crows lifted off and scattered skywards, through the mists, cawing raucously. Red shied and reared, but somehow Becky managed to stay on. She dismounted, whispering to him, smoothing his nose, trying to settle him down again.
Brighteyes was growling from the back of his throat. He had seen the man before she had. The man was whistling as he came into view. He was pushing a wheelbarrow. He wore the same flat cap and the same dirty blue overalls. Becky could see quite clearly now what was in the wheelbarrow. A dead greyhound. Black and white. Alfie. It was Alfie. Becky’s pulse was pounding in her ears. She stifled the scream rising inside her, as she watched him wheeling the barrow out into a nearby field. That was when Becky saw the mound of newly dug earth and a spade stuck into the top of it. Beyond this grave there were dozens of other mounds, some with the earth freshly turned, but most already grassed over.
A terrible grief and a fierce anger gripped Becky’s heart as she looked out over this hateful killing field, as she watched Alfie being dumped into his grave. She turned and walked away weeping silently. She could feel Brighteyes beside her, his face against her leg. One glance between them told her he had seen and understood everything. In the moments that followed Becky decided exactly what she had to do.
She took her time riding back over the darkening moor. She stopped off for a short while by her rock on High Moor, partly to postpone her return to the farmhouse for as long as she could, and partly to say goodbye to her father, to tell him what she was going to do. “I’ll be back one day, Dad, I promise,” she said as she left. “But I don’t exactly know when.”
Once back in the farmyard she led Red to his stable, fed him and said her last goodbyes. She took Brighteyes to his kennel and put out some food for him. “I won’t be long,” she whispered, getting up to go. “Then we’ll be out of here, for good. I know you don’t want it, but try to eat. You’ll need it.”
Craig and her mother were in the sitting room with the television on. To avoid them she went in the back door and up the back stairs to her bedroom, where she sat on her bed to write the letter she would be leaving behind. She kept it short.
Dear Mum,
I’m going away with Brighteyes. I don’t know where, just away. I know it’s not your fault, but you promised me Alfie was going to be looked after. That’s what he told you. That’s what he told me. I can’t even write his name, I hate him so much. Sometimes I’ve even hated you, Mum, because you take his side, because you won’t stand up to him enough, even when he rubbishes Dad, and because you won’t leave him even though you know he’s a monster, and I just can’t understand that.
I want to tell you what I’ve just seen, but I can’t write it because I’ll remember it too well. Just tell him that I know what really happened to Alfie, and to all the dogs when he sends them away, because I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And I’m not going to let it happen to Brighteyes. One day even Brighteyes will start losing, or he’ll break down like Alfie and he’ll be no use any more for racing. Then he’ll do the same thing to Brighteyes as he did to all the others. So I’m taking him away before the Land Rover does. Don’t worry about me. Brighteyes
and I will look after one another.
I love you Mum, but I just can’t be around him any more.
Becky
She folded the letter and slipped it under her pillow. Later her mother called her down for supper. She went because she didn’t want to arouse suspicion, and because she was hungry, and because she didn’t know when she’d be eating again. She tried not to look at Craig at all, but their eyes did meet once, and she stared at him, telling him with that one withering look just how much she loathed and despised him. She hardly said a word to anyone all through the meal, and afterwards went upstairs just as soon as she could. When her mother came to say good night, she pretended to be asleep. Hidden away in the bottom of her cupboard was her rucksack already packed, and all the clothes she was going to wear later that night were ready under her bed.
It was a long wait. Becky needed to be quite sure they were both fast asleep before she made a move. When she got up at last, she trod lightly down the stairs. There was a blustery wind that night, that shook the house and rattled the doors and windows, so any sound she made was well camouflaged. She slipped silently out of the house. It was a clear, moonlit night. As she crossed the yard she began whispering to the dogs to let them know it was her. The last thing she wanted was for them to start barking. There was a whimper or two from them as she let Brighteyes out of his kennel, but nothing more. She put on his coat, and then, with Brighteyes close on her heels, she was running up the farm track and away. At the top of the hill she stopped for one last look at the farm below her. “I’m sorry, Mum,” she breathed. Then she hitched up her rucksack, and set off down the road that would lead to wherever she was going. Where that would be she had no idea.
Up to this point her plan for their escape had been very specific in its detail. But now they were in unknown territory. All she knew was that she and Brighteyes were walking the road that led to the rest of the world, and they would follow wherever it went. Just so long as she didn’t ever have to see Craig again, just so long as Brighteyes was with her and safe, she didn’t mind.