Then one warm summer evening, I decided it might be an idea to go into the park and find myself a nice park bench where I could spend the night. I was fed up with the four walls of my stuffy little room at the hostel. I lay there that night looking up at the stars and I remember thinking about Mr Alfie, and hoping he was better, and about Dombey, wondering where he’d gone, whether he was behaving himself and who was looking after him now.
And I was wondering too where Miss West was these days, and whether I’d ever see anything of any of them ever again. I went to sleep. The first thing I heard when I woke up was the sound of trotting horses, lots of snorting and snuffling, and jingling harnesses, and a whinny or two as well. I sat up. I thought I must still be dreaming. But I wasn’t.
There were dozens of horses coming towards me in twos, one of each pair being ridden, the other being led. As they came closer I could see there were soldiers riding them, all in khaki uniforms, with peaked caps. They trotted right past me. The horses were magnificent, not big sturdy Suffolk horses like Mr Alfie’s, but sleek-looking thoroughbreds with shining coats and tossing heads. None of the soldiers spoke to me as they rode by, except for the last one, who wasn’t leading a second horse like all the others – and that was just as well, I was thinking, because the horse he was riding was really playing up. All wild-eyed and skippy and up on his toes he was.
“Nice morning,” said the soldier. And that’s all he had time to say, because that’s when it happened, just as he was talking to me.
Suddenly this dog came charging out of the trees from behind my bench, barking his head off, a little scruffy-looking thing he was. Well of course that skippy horse took one look at him, shied, reared up, then threw his rider and took off into the park. I did the first thing that came into my head. I went after the horse. I caught up with him in the end, just before he reached the road. I was a bit puffed out by this time. He was still quite upset, but I could see that he had calmed down a little, enough to be nuzzling at the grass. I sweet-talked him as I came towards him, just like I’d learned to do with Dombey.
When I got close enough, I managed to smoothe his neck and stroke his ears and finally I got hold of his reins and began to walk him back. The whole column of horses had stopped by now and I saw the soldier who’d been thrown limping towards me.
“You all right?” I asked him.
“Bit knocked about, but I’ll be fine. Stupid ruddy dog,” he said. “But you did well to catch my horse before he got on the road. I owe you one. He was a bit full of himself this morning. He gets like that.” He took the reins from me. “You know horses, don’t you?” he went on. “I mean you’re really good with them. We could do with a fellow like you in the regiment. Ever fancied being a soldier?”
“What, with horses?”
“Why not?” said the soldier. “It’s what I am. I get three square meals a day, and a warm bed to sleep in. Pay’s not brilliant, but it’ll do. We have a pretty good time, us and the horses. You should try it.”
And I remembered then that Mr Alfie had been a soldier once, and with horses too.
“Maybe I will,” I told him.
“Tell you what you do then,” he said. “Just go down the road to that big building there beyond the trees. It’s where we’re headed now. Follow where the horse poos lead. You can’t miss it. Ask for the duty officer. I’ll tell him what’s happened, tell him to expect you.”
Well, I’d got nothing much else to do, had I? Why not give it a go, I thought. So that same morning I did what the soldier had said, followed the horse poos, and went along there. To cut a long story short, that’s how I joined the army.
A few weeks of being shouted at and marching up and down and polishing boots and badges, a few more weeks of driving around in armoured cars, and then they let me have a go on the horses.
I could not believe my luck. From sleeping rough on a park bench to sitting up there on my shiny black horse, with a shiny helmet on my head, and a shiny breastplate to match, in a pair of the longest, shiniest, blackest boots you ever saw, and a shining sword over my shoulder. I just didn’t think life could get any shinier.
But it did.
It was the day of my first big parade, the Queen’s Birthday Parade it was, and the band was there too. I heard them before I saw them, the big drum thumping away. Then they came round the corner, the full regimental mounted band, all of them playing their instruments, on horseback. What a sound it was! What a sight it was! And out in front of the band was this huge drum horse, a silver kettledrum on either side of him, and the Drum Major banging away on them, like he was having the time of his life. Then I looked again. I can tell you, I nearly fell off my horse. That drum horse was brown and white! That drum horse was a skewbald! It was Dombey! No mistake, it was my Dombey!
I sat there on my horse during that whole parade, making up my mind there and then that one day I’d be up there riding Dombey, that one day it would be me banging away on those shiny silver kettledrums.
When the parade was over I went to see Dombey in his stable. He knew me right away and I can’t tell you how happy that made me.
It took me a few years of course, and I had to work hard, but I got there in the end. It was the proudest day of my life that first time riding out as Drum Major on old Dombey – and he was quite old by then – banging out the rhythm for the band, the whole of London echoing with it. As I rode along the Mall up to the Palace, there were crowds everywhere, clapping and smiling. They weren’t looking at me, they were looking at Dombey – I know that.
I kept thinking all the while of Mr Alfie and Miss West, and all they’d done for me, how they’d kept faith with me, and I just hoped they were somewhere in the crowd out there and watching me. More than anything I wanted them to be proud of me. I swear I kept hearing Mr Alfie’s voice in my head, saying the same thing over and over, the beat of the drum in every word:
“Not bad for a bad lad, Not a bad lad at all.”
So now you know my whole life story – well, most of it anyway. Of course I had my ups and downs, as you do. Life’s not simple. Things don’t always work out exactly as you hope they will. I never saw Ma again. I was angry with her and she was angry with me. It’s my worst regret. Terrible thing, anger. My little brother told me at her funeral, that she did come to see me once on parade in Whitehall. He said she talked about me all the time after that.
As for Miss West, she wrote to me a few months ago, out of the blue, after she’d seen a picture of me in the paper. She’s in a home now, in Sussex, but still hale and hearty at ninety-three. We go and have tea with her, your Grandma and me, and talk about the time when I was Drum Cupboard Monitor. I always feel about ten years old when I’m with her. Funny that. I feel so lucky that we found one another again after so long.
All in all, I’ve been a lucky lad, luckier than I deserve, that’s for sure. I’ve had my children and my grandchildren, and I’ve had Grandma with me all these years. It’s her that’s kept me going. She bucks me up when I need it, and I’ve needed it a lot, needed her a lot. Sometimes she says I still love Dombey more than I love her, which is not true.
But it’s a close thing.
Michael Morpurgo
Michael Morpurgo is, in his own words, “oldish, married with three children, and a grandfather six times over.” Born in 1943, he attended schools in London, Sussex and Canterbury. He went on to London University to study English and French, followed by a step into the teaching profession and a job in a primary school. It was there that he discovered what he wanted to do:
“We had to read the children a story every day and my lot were bored by the book I was reading. I decided I had to do something and told them the kind of story I used to tell my kids… I could see there was magic in it for them, and realised there was magic in it for me.”
In 1976 Michael and his wife, Clare, started the charity ‘Farms For City Children’ (FFCC), which gives young children from inner city and urban areas an opportunity to work on farms i
n the heart of the countryside. They now have three farms and Michael is patron to many, many more charities.
Michael divides his time between working with children on the farms and writing. “For me, the greater part of writing is daydreaming, dreaming the dream of my story until it hatches out – the writing down of it I always find hard. But I love finishing it, then… sharing my dream with my readers.”
Michael Foreman
Michael Foreman grew up during the Second World War in the fishing village of Pakefield in Suffolk. As the beach was sprinked with mines and covered with barbed wire, bombsites became his playground. His mother ran the Pakefield newsagent and it was during his daily paper round that Michael met a teacher from Lowestoft Art School who encouraged him to attend his Saturday art class for children. Michael’s talent was obvious, so his teacher suggested that he come to the art school two afternoons a week, eventually attending the art school full time.
Michael’s first book, The General, was published while he was still a student at the Royal College of Art in London. Since that first book, Michael has become one of the greatest creators of children’s books of recent times. A great traveller, he has illustrated collections of fairytales and legends from all over the world, as well as the works of Dickens, Shakespeare, Roald Dahl, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson and many others. His most famous, award-winning collaboration is with Michael Morpurgo. This book is their twenty-third book together.
Michael has also written and illustrated an amazing collection of books himself, many based on personal experience, including the autobiographical War Boy, which won the Kate Greenaway Medal, and War Game, which won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize.
A TEMPLAR BOOK
First published in the UK in 2010 by Templar Publishing, an imprint of the Templar Company Limited, The Granary, North Street, Dorking, Surrey, RH4 1DN, UK
www.templarco.co.uk
This ebook edition first published in 2011 by Templar Publishing
All rights reserved
Text copyright © 2010 by Michael Morpurgo
Illustrations copyright © 2010 by Michael Foreman
Cover photograph copyright © gettyimages.co.uk
Cover designed by Will Steele
The right of Michael Morpurgo to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. www.michaelmorpurgo.com
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
ISBN (ePub) 978–1–84877–318–9
ISBN (Mobi) 978–1–84877–317–2
Michael Morpurgo, Not Bad for a Bad Lad
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