The Classic Morpurgo Collection (six novels) by Michael Morpurgo
The greyhound, light fawn with a small white patch on his chest, stood there trembling at the end of his chain, looking about him nervously. “Here Becky!” Craig waved her over. “Don’t just stand there gawping. Get over here. Put him in with Alfie. I want Alfie to teach him everything he knows about racing. And you’d better give him something to eat while you’re about it. Which reminds me. What’s for lunch? I’m starving.”
Becky hesitated very deliberately. She objected to being bossed about, and wanted him to know it. So she took her time, leaning the dung fork against the wall, and then wandering very slowly across the yard towards him, staring him out as she came. She disliked everything about him, his loudness and his brashness, how he always had to be the centre of attention. She hated looking at him even, so she tried not to. He wasn’t ugly or gross, it wasn’t that. It was just that he always looked so full of himself.
“Well, take your time, why don’t you?” He said, handing her the chain. “And no spoiling him, you hear me? None of your namby pamby nonsense.” Becky knew exactly what was coming next. “He’s a racing dog, an athlete, not a poodle, not a pet.”
“What’s he called?” Becky asked him.
“Call him whatever you like. Just look after him.”
Moments later Becky found herself alone in the yard with the new dog. As she walked him towards the kennels all the other dogs, all fourteen of them, had their noses through the bars, scrutinising the newcomer, some of them up on their hind legs and yelping in excitement. Becky laughed. “Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?” she told them.
She crouched down by Alfie’s kennel so that she could introduce them properly through the kennel gate, so they could get to know one another slowly. Alfie was a giant of a greyhound, black and white with a slightly greying muzzle.
“Meet Alfie,” she said, reaching through the bars to stroke his ears. “He’s the fastest dog we’ve got, aren’t you, Alfie? Won sixty-two out of eighty races, haven’t you? A real champion. But I’m not supposed to stroke you, am I? I do though, don’t I? I pet them all because I like it, and because they like it. Alfie and me, we’re very special friends, aren’t we, Alfie? We go up on the moor together with Red, don’t we? Long walks, long talks.”
She felt the new dog shivering and shaking against her leg. He was terrified or cold, or both. “Don’t you worry. Alfie won’t hurt you.” She took his face in her hands then and looked deep into his eyes. “So what am I going to call you? You’ve got to have a name. Can’t not have a name, can you? You’ve got one already, I bet. Every dog’s got a name. I wonder what yours is. Wish you could tell me.” She thought for some moments, and then it came to her. “Brighteyes. That’ll do. You’ll be Brighteyes. How d’you like that? Craig’ll give you some stupid racing name… ‘Bucks Fizz’ or ‘Speedy Gonzalez’. And down at the track they’ll give you a number – they always do. But here you’ll be Brighteyes.” She kissed him on his head and whispered: “Be fast, Brighteyes, be very fast, and they won’t take you away from me. Never forget that.”
Becky stayed there watching the two dogs for some time, Alfie circling Brighteyes, checking him out, and all the while Brighteyes stood in the middle of the kennel trembling from head to tail. After a few minutes Alfie seemed satisfied, because he came and stood alongside him then, very close, their shoulders touching. Becky could see that the two of them were friends already. Alfie stood almost a head higher. He was resting his chin on Brighteyes’ neck, and this must have been a great comfort to Brighteyes because very soon the trembling stopped altogether.
Within days it was as if they had known each other all their lives. They’d become quite inseparable. Whenever Becky let them out Brighteyes would stick to Alfie like a shadow. Very soon she was so confident Brighteyes wouldn’t run off that she was able to take both dogs with her when she went out riding on Red, something she liked to do as often as she could. That first morning she took them out together, they raced way ahead of her, almost side by side, but always Alfie leading by a neck and Brighteyes following. However fast Becky rode, they raced ahead faster, hurdling the rocks and streams, pausing only to let her catch up.
They ended up on the very top of High Moor. The dogs sat beside one another next to her on the bank, their panting almost synchronised, as Red grazed the grass busily below, scarcely ever lifting his head. The dogs were both looking at her quizzically. “You’re right,” she told them. “Dad’s up here, isn’t he? You know it too, don’t you? This is my favourite place in the whole wide world, because Dad’s here, because I feel free. That’s why you like it too. You love to run free. It’s what you were made for. You weren’t made for that horrible dog track. This is where you belong, like I do.”
In fact, Becky had hardly ever been to see the greyhounds racing. The few times she had gone she’d hated every minute of it. She loathed having to watch the dogs she knew and loved treated simply as numbered racing machines, so many of them quite evidently terrified by all the bright lights and the noise of the crowd, of the blaring loud speakers, and the deafening music. Beside them in the stand, Craig would bellow and roar, whether his dogs won or not. It didn’t matter if it was a winning triumph or a losing disaster. Either way he’d go berserk, and then afterwards he’d drink too much with his cronies, while Becky and her mother and the dogs had to sit and wait in the car park for him.
On the way home, especially if he’d lost heavily on the dogs or the betting, he’d start shouting at her mother, and if Becky tried to intervene he’d turn on her too. Craig could be very frightening at times like these, and Becky didn’t want to be near him. So, more often than not, she’d tell her mother she had homework to finish, which was sometimes true, and stay at home. She’d make sure she was in bed with the lights out by the time they got back. She could tell right away at breakfast the next morning whether the dogs had won or not, whether Craig had lost money. If he’d had a bad night, he’d sit there in an angry and sullen silence. He’d start nasty and he’d stay nasty all day. Neither Becky nor her mother were allowed to forget it. He’d snap at them and find fault with everything they said or did. So Becky certainly preferred it when the dogs won.
But there was another reason why she always wanted the dogs to win. It had taken a while for her to grasp what was really going on. If ever a dog began to lose too often, she knew that sooner or later it would happen. The battered grey Land Rover would come rattling down the farm track into the yard. Whenever it came Becky did her best to stay out of the way. She dreaded it every time. If she asked about it or objected to it, it would send Craig into one of his rages. So, filled with guilt, she’d keep quiet, go to her room and watch from her window.
Craig would usually talk with the driver for a minute or two. Becky hadn’t ever really seen his face properly. Most of it was hidden by a flat cap. He wore dirty blue overalls, and shuffled rather than walked over to the kennels. Every time the chosen dog was hauled out of his kennel, Becky could see that he understood what was going to happen to him, because he’d fight against it, pulling on his chain, desperately trying to break free. The other dogs seemed to sense it too. They’d set up a plaintive chorus of yelping and whining that lasted long after the Land Rover had disappeared up the track.
Becky asked her mother again and again where the dogs were being taken to, and who the man in the dirty blue overalls was. Her mother couldn’t say much about it, and that was what was so worrying for Becky. All her mother would tell her was that once a greyhound’s racing days were over, he was taken off to an animal rescue centre, and from there they went to good homes where they’d be well looked after. But then often she’d add something that Becky had never been able to believe. “Craig’s very generous,” she’d tell her. “He gives the rescue centre a big donation every time they take a dog away. He’s good like that – you just don’t see that side of him, you never have. You mustn’t worry so much.” But Becky did worry, because she was quite sure by now that Craig didn’t have a generous bone in his
To Becky, who had spent so much time with the greyhounds, it was all utterly heartless and cruel, an outrage. Every time she had to watch them being dragged away like that, just because they could not longer win races, made her hate Craig even more. He never warned her when it was going to happen, nor which of them was going to be taken off next in the battered grey Land Rover, never to be seen again. So she never had the chance to say goodbye properly. She dreaded that one day Alfie might stop winning, might just get too old for it, might injure himself, and then he’d be taken away too. She knew that one day it was going to happen. It was just a question of time. Brighteyes was younger of course. Maybe he had a longer future, but their futures always ended the same way.
It was something her mother said to her one evening when they were alone that changed Becky’s mind about going along with them to the races. “You handle the dogs so much better than I do, Becky,” she said. “They know you better. They like you better. I’ve watched you with them. They run like the wind when you’re around. They always win more. I know they do. And besides,” she went on, “it’ll make Craig happy to see you take more of an interest. And I’d like it too, to have you there, I mean. You’d be company for me.”
Becky thought about it for a long time. Craig was entering Brighteyes for more and more races these days, trying him out, testing him, always with Alfie. Becky hated watching them being driven off in the van. She missed them when they were gone. It was that more than anything that changed her mind. She wanted to be with them all she could. And if her mother was right, maybe she really could help Alfie and the others run faster and keep winning. That was enough for Becky. She’d go. She’d ignore Craig, just pretend he wasn’t there.
The journeys to the dog tracks on race nights were long and tedious, all the way to London sometimes, to Walthamstow for the big races, and Craig was his usual boorish and beastly self every time. But it did cheer her mother up to have her there, and anyway Becky usually managed to keep her distance from Craig. She was always in the back of the van with the dogs, happy just to be with them. The evenings she looked forward to most were when Alfie and Brighteyes were running – Craig liked to run them together. He had put them through their paces every day up on the moor behind the house. They could all see how the older dog was bringing the younger one on every time they ran, how quick and strong Brighteyes was becoming, improving with every race, how he would never let Alfie get away from him, but stuck to his shoulder all the time, like an unshakeable shadow.
In race after race all over the country they came in first and second, usually but not always Alfie crossing the line first by just a whisker. It was a winning streak which went on for nearly a year. Craig could not believe his luck – he’d never before raked in so much prize money, nor so many trophies for the sideboard back at the farmhouse. He was doing just as well out of his betting too. But all the while other dogs in the kennels came and went. Every couple of months or so Becky saw the battered grey Land Rover come rattling down the farm track. She wept every time it happened. She just hoped, and now she prayed too, that Alfie and Brighteyes would go on winning for ever and never have to be taken away.
By this time the two dogs were quite inseparable. Try to take one out of the kennel and not the other, and they would both make a terrible fuss, an ear-splitting hullabaloo of yowling and whining and yapping that upset every dog in the kennels. Brighteyes stood as tall as Alfie these days, though he was not as powerfully muscled. For each other, and for Becky too, they had become soul mates. She would never go without them when she rode out on Red. And if ever Craig and her mother went out and left her alone in the house for an evening, she would bring them in from the kennels. She liked to let them have the run of the house, to jump up on the sofa beside her. It was strictly against Craig’s rules to have any of the dogs inside the house, but Craig’s rules were of no account to Becky when he wasn’t there.
She loved these evenings, just the three of them with the log fire blazing and her music on. She’d often find herself talking to them, confiding in them all her deepest thoughts. She was lying there one evening with Alfie and Brighteyes sprawled beside her on the sofa, when she began to feel all her pent-up grief welling inside her, until she was so utterly overwhelmed by waves of sadness that the whole story came pouring out of her, about her father, about what had happened on that terrible Sunday morning nearly three years before. It was a secret she had never shared with anyone before, not even her mother, a secret that had haunted her every day since.
“Whichever way you look at it,” she told them, through her tears, “it was my fault. I made it happen. I was the one who had two mugs of hot chocolate the night before and finished all the milk. That was why there was no milk for breakfast. Mum was away visiting Nan, who hadn’t been too well. Before Nan died, she got this emphysema thing. She couldn’t breathe very well and she used to get panicky. So sometimes Mum went over to be with her at weekends. That’s why there was just Dad and me at home, and I’m lying in bed upstairs trying my best not to wake up. Dad shouts up to me and says we’ve run out of milk, and will I get up and fetch some from the corner shop down the road, while he does the breakfast. But I’m really sleepy and just not feeling like getting up at all, so I pretend I’m still asleep and I haven’t heard him.
“The next thing I know I hear the front door open and he’s calling upstairs, all jokey and sarcastic. ‘I’ll go myself then, shall I, Sleepyhead? Oh, and don’t you worry yourself about your poor old dad. He doesn’t mind going out in the rain and getting himself a good soaking just because his daughter’s pigged out on the hot chocolate again last night. You have a nice lie-in, why don’t you? Back soon!’
“And then he’s gone, and I snuggle down the bed again, feeling a little bit guilty, but not that much, and before I know it I’m dropping off to sleep again. I don’t know how long I’m asleep, but it’s the front door bell that wakes me. So I go downstairs, a bit fed up, thinking that Dad’s forgotten his key accidentally on purpose, just to get me out of bed, and there’s the police standing there, two of them, one woman, one man, and they’re both looking as if they don’t quite know what to say. Then the policeman asks me if my mum’s in, and I tell him that Dad’ll be back soon, that he’s just gone down the shop for some milk. I see them looking at one another, and the policeman takes off his cap and asks if they can come in for a moment.
“That’s the first time I think something’s wrong – it’s just the way they look at each other. But they won’t say what it is, nor who they want, nor what the matter is. They just ask where Mum has gone and they say they’d like to speak to her, so I give them her mobile number. The policeman goes out and leaves me with this policewoman who tries to smile at me and make conversation, but she can’t do either, not really. So we’re just sitting there, the two of us – it seems like for hours – while he’s phoning up and stuff, and still Dad doesn’t come back and doesn’t come back, and I’m wondering why, and knowing by now that something really bad must have happened to him, or maybe to Mum. I keep asking what’s going on, but she won’t say.
“Then Mum comes in and I can see she’s been crying, and she takes me upstairs and we sit on the bed together, and she tells me. It was a lorry that did it, ran out of control at the bottom of the hill, mounted the pavement outside the shop just when Dad was coming out with the milk. But it wasn’t the lorry that killed him. It was me, using up all the milk to make my hot chocolate, me staying in bed when he asked me to go.”
All the time Becky was talking the dogs’ eyes never left her face. “I’ve never talked about it to anyone else, except Dad of course. I’ve talked to him lots of times, up on High Moor, and he’s all right about it. He says it wasn’t my fault, but then he would say that, wouldn’t he? Because he wants me to feel better about it. He told me I should tell Mum, that she won’t be upset, and
“‘So what?’ I say.
“‘We’ve got to move on,’ she says – she’s always saying that. ‘What’s happened has happened. We’ve got to put it behind us. No use crying over spilt milk.’
“She really did say that once, honest. I think of it all the time, the spilt milk on the pavement outside the shop. I never saw it, but I think of it and I wish I didn’t. I so want to tell her everything just like I’ve told you, but I can’t, I just can’t. And I don’t think I ever will.”
Becky cried herself to sleep soon afterwards, and her mother and Craig found her still sleeping there on the sofa when they came back, Alfie and Brighteyes lolling beside her, their heads on her lap.
Craig wasn’t just angry, he was apoplectic. “If you want to sleep with them,” he was yelling right in her face, “then you know what you can do, you can ruddy well go and sleep in the kennels. But you’re not going to do it in my house, you get me?”