Not Bad for a Bad Lad by Michael Morpurgo
Contents
Title Page
Not Bad for a Bad Lad
Copyright
THIS IS THE STORY of my life. I’ve written it so you’ll know all the things about your grandpa that you’ve got a right to know and that I never told you. There’s no two ways about it: when I was young I was a bad lad. I’m not proud of it, not one bit. Grandma has been saying for quite a while now that it’s about time I told you everything, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth – before it’s too late, she says. So here goes.
I was born in 1943, on the 5th of October. But you don’t want to know that. It was a long time ago, that’s all, when the world was a very different place. A whole lifetime ago for me.
I had a dad, of course I did, but I never met him. He just wasn’t there, so I didn’t miss him. Well maybe I did, maybe I just didn’t know it at the time. Ma had six children. I was number four and I was always a bad lad, right from the start. Down our street there was this bomb site – there were lots of houses around us all bombed to bits in the war. There was a sign up outside the bomb site. It said: ‘Danger. Keep Out’. Well of course I went in, didn’t I? And that’s because it was the best place to play. I’m telling you, it was supreme. I could climb the walls, I could make dens, I could chase butterflies, and when Ma called me in for my tea I could hide away and pretend I wasn’t there. I remember the local copper. He was called PC Nightingale – some names you don’t forget – and he would come in after me sometimes and chase me out. He’d shout it out all down the street how he’d give me a right good hiding if he ever caught me in there again.
When I was old enough to go to school, to St Matthias, down the road, I discovered pretty quick that I didn’t like it, or they didn’t like me – a bit of both, I reckon. That’s why I bunked off school whenever I could, whenever I felt like it, which was quite often. The School Attendance Officer would come round to the house and complain to Ma about me. Sometimes he’d threaten to take me away and put me in a home, then Ma would get all upset and yell at me, and I’d yell back at her. We did a lot of yelling, Ma and me. I’d tell her how the teachers were always having a go at me, whatever I was doing, whenever I opened my mouth, that they whacked me with a ruler if I talked back, or cheeked them, that I spent most of my lessons standing with my face in the corner, so what was the point of being at school anyway?
The trouble was, and I can see now what I couldn’t see then, that I turned out to be no good at anything the teachers wanted me to be good at. And when I was no good they told me I was no good, and that just made the whole thing worse. I couldn’t do my reading. I couldn’t do my writing. I couldn’t do my arithmetic – sums and things like that. I was, “a brainless, useless, good-for-nothing waste of space”.
That’s what Mr Mortimer called me one day in front of the whole school and he was the head teacher, so he had to be right, didn’t he? There was only one thing I did like at school and that was the music lessons, because we had Miss West to teach us and Miss West liked me, I could tell. She was kind to me, made me feel special. She smelled of lavender and face powder and I loved that. She made me Drum Cupboard Monitor, and that meant that whenever she wanted anything from the drum cupboard, she’d give me the key and send me off to fetch a triangle, or the cymbals maybe, or the tambourines, or a drum. And what’s more, she’d let me play on them too. So when all the others were tootling away on their recorders, I got to have a go on the drums, or the cymbals, or the tambourine, or the triangle – but the triangle was a bit tinkly, didn’t make a loud enough noise, not for me anyway. I liked the drum best. I liked banging out the rhythm, loud, and Miss West told me I had a really good sense of rhythm, that drums and me were made for one another, even if I was sometimes, she said, “a wee bit over-enthusiastic”.
Then Miss West left the school – I don’t know why – and that made me very sad. I still played the drums whenever I could, and I was still Drum Cupboard Monitor, but none of it was nearly so much fun without Miss West. I never forgot her though, and you’ll see why soon enough.
I was that keen on drumming by now that I began to find ways of doing it out of school. At home I’d play the spoons all the time, and drive Ma half barmy with it. When she sent me out, I’d do it with sticks on the railings, or on dustbin lids. Dustbin lids were best because if I banged them hard enough I could make a din like thunder that echoed all down the street, and sent the pigeons scattering.
Some people, like Mrs Dickson who kept the shop on the corner, had two dustbins outside, so I could stand there and bang away on two dustbin lids at the same time, then I could pick them up and crash them together like cymbals. You should have heard the racket that made! But Mrs Dickson was a bit of a spoilsport. She’d come running out of her shop and tick me off. She’d shoo me away with her broom, and call me “a bad, bad lad” – and other things too that I’d better not mention.
Then I went and did something really stupid.
I stole an orange from a barrow in the market. And what did I do? I only ran round the corner, smack into PC Nightingale, who also told me I was a bad lad. He took me back home, tweaking my ear all the way, and told Ma what I had done, and that I needed a right good walloping. So she said I was a bad lad too and smacked me on the back of my knees. The day after that, things only went from bad to worse.
In school the next morning, at assembly, Mr Mortimer told us he’d got a very serious announcement to make, very serious indeed. He said that PC Nightingale had been in to see him with some very bad news, about an orange. I knew I was in for it now. He held up the orange I’d nicked, or one just like it, and told everyone that they had an orange thief in the school. I knew what was coming. He called out my name and pointed right at me with his yellow nicotiney finger. Everyone turned round to look at me, which I didn’t much mind – actually, to be honest, I quite enjoyed that part of it – you know, the fame part, the recognition. After all, I was the school’s chief troublemaker. That was what I was good at, being a troublemaker. I was proud of it too. I had my reputation. I was someone to be reckoned with and I liked that.
Mr Mortimer got me up there in front of everyone, and told me to hold out my hand, and then he whacked me with the ruler – which I did mind, because this time it was with the edge of the ruler, on the back of my hand, on my knuckles, and it hurt like billy-o. And, yes, you’ve guessed it, he told me I was a bad lad, and how I’d bought shame on myself and on the whole school.
Worst of all though, he said I wasn’t Drum Cupboard Monitor any more, and that I wasn’t going to be allowed to play on the drums any more, nor on the cymbals, nor even on the silly triangle, not ever. Well, that was it, the final straw, that and my bruised knuckles. Now I was mad, really mad – and I’m not excusing myself – but that was why I went and did something that was even more stupid than nicking the orange in the first place.
Because I’d been Drum Cupboard Monitor, I knew exactly where the drum cupboard key was kept, didn’t I? On the hook in the back of the teacher’s desk. So at break time I took the key, opened the drum cupboard and pinched the biggest drum of the lot, my favourite. Then, banging it as loud as I could, and with the whole school watching, I marched through the playground, out of the school gates and down the road. I went on banging that drum all the way home. I got expelled for that, which was all right by me, because without Miss West there I hated the place anyway.
The other schools Ma sent me to after that weren’t much better. The trouble was, they all knew I was a bad lad before I even got there. It’s obvious, isn’t it? They expected me to be a troublemaker and so that’s just what I was, every time. In the end I ran out of schools that would have me. I couldn’t even begin to count the number of times they c
By now I’d got in with a gang of bigger kids and I wasn’t nicking just oranges any more. Anything they could do, I could do better. I had to prove myself, that’s how I saw it. One evening we saw this car parked in the street, a nice shiny-looking MG it was. It wasn’t locked and the driver had left his key in the ignition. Well, I was used to cars, wasn’t I? I knew a little bit about them. So, just to show off to the other kids, I got in and drove it away. Simple.
I roared around the place for half an hour or so, until I hit the kerb and got a puncture. I was just about to get out and leg it, when I saw this pen lying there on the passenger seat – gold topped it was with a gold arrow, very smart, and must be worth a bit too, I thought. So I pocketed it and then got out of there, smartish. Before I went home I flogged the pen outside The Horse and Plough, the pub down our street, and for the very first time in my life, I had proper money in my hand. Five shillings I got for it. All right, that’s only twenty-five pence in today’s money, but that was a lot then, a small fortune to me.
Next thing I knew, the police came round to our house that evening to question me. They said someone had seen me that afternoon getting out of a stolen car. I told them I’d been at home all the time, and that anyway, I didn’t know how to drive. They went and searched the house, but they didn’t find anything. I’d hidden my five shillings in the water cistern above the lavvy out the back – y’know, the toilet. They were always out the back in those days.
When they’d gone Ma gave me the rollicking of my life. She took me by the shoulders and shook me till my teeth rattled. She said she knew I’d done it. “You weren’t home this afternoon, were you? You lied, didn’t you? I should have told them, I should have.” She was crying and shouting at the same time, really angry with me she was. “Reform school, Borstal, that’s where you belong. Maybe they can knock some sense into you, because I can’t. You’re nothing but trouble. You can’t be good like other kids, can you? Oh no, you’ve got to go nicking stuff, thieving, lying. Where d’you think that’s going to get you anyway? Crime doesn’t pay. Never did. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know anything?”
Ma was so upset I was worried she might go after the coppers and tell them. But she didn’t, thank goodness. So I was in the clear. I’d got away with it. After that, I got away with it again and again. Most of the others in our gang were a lot older than me, and a whole lot better at thieving than I was. But I was learning fast, all the tricks of the burgling trade: how you choose your house, take your time in staking it out, prise open windows, pick door locks and break into safes. And you had to know who the fences were because you had to get rid of the loot, all the stolen stuff, the incriminating stuff as quick as possible. In only a year or two I was a fully trained thief and a bad lad through and through. But there was one thing I never learned properly: how not to get caught.
For maybe a year or so, everything looked as if it was working out fine. I was doing very nicely thank you. Who says crime doesn’t pay, Ma? That’s what I was thinking. I had more than enough money to buy anything and everything I wanted: flash suits, flash watch and flash motorbike. I could show-off to everyone at home, brag about how well I was doing to anyone who would listen. The girls were taking quite a fancy to me too, and I didn’t mind that either, not one bit. They all thought I was quite a lad. I even bought Ma one of those new-fangled television sets. She was mighty pleased with that, I can tell you. Quite proud of me she was, but that was only because she thought I’d gone back to my old job at the garage, because that’s what I’d told her. She never knew where the money came from, nor what I was getting up to. Mind you, she never asked. Thinking back now, I reckon that might have been because she didn’t want to know. She wasn’t stupid, my Ma.
Then one night my luck ran out. I’d done a good clean job, in and out of an empty house, quiet as a mouse, no one there, no bother. I’d nicked some silver and some jewellery, nice stuff too. Everything seemed tickety-boo. But as I was coming away from the house I saw this copper riding towards me on his bike. I should have just walked on by – he wouldn’t have even noticed I was there. But oh no, I had to go and make a run for it. First rule in the book: always walk away from a job, never run. He blew his whistle and I was off down the road, going like a greyhound.
He chased after me, over a building site, across a railway line. I chucked away all the stuff I’d pinched. Lose the evidence, that’s what I was thinking, but I couldn’t lose him. In the end, I scrambled over the wall into someone’s back garden, and then I saw this greenhouse. So I dived in there, nifty as you like, and hid myself in amongst a whole forest of tomato plants. For a while there was a lot of shouting and dancing torchlights out there, but then it all went quiet. It was just me and a big round moon up there and tomatoes all around me. I thought I’d just lie low for a bit, until things calmed down, until I was quite sure I was in the clear.
Half an hour or so later I was still sitting there in the greenhouse, happily scoffing down a nice ripe tomato, when I looked up and saw this little boy standing there in his striped pyjamas.
“That’s one of my dad’s tomatoes,” he said. “That’s stealing, that is. You’re the one the coppers were after, aren’t you? You’re a bad’n, I know you are.”
And then, before I could stop him, he ran for it, shouting his head off. In no time at all there were coppers everywhere and they took me away. I got sentenced to a year in Borstal for breaking and entering. It would have been more if Miss West hadn’t come and spoken up for me.
It was very kind of her, but I felt so ashamed of myself when I saw her coming into the court. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her properly.
The magistrate told me just what he thought of me. “You’ve been a bad lad, haven’t you?” he said. “However, your old teacher, Miss West, tells us you’re not a bad lad at heart and I’m inclined to believe her, to give you the benefit of the doubt. But you have been stupid, that’s for sure, and you’ve got yourself in with the wrong sort.” He leaned forward and looked at me over his glasses. “You’ve wasted your life up until now, young man,” he went on. “You’re only sixteen, still young. You can make a fresh start. You can put things right if you want to. It’s up to you. You’ll have a year in Borstal to think things over, to learn your lesson. Take him away.”
Silly old goat, I was thinking. But I knew in my heart of hearts, even as I was thinking it, that I was the silly one, not him.
So after a few nights in a police cell, they drove me away to this Borstal place, a sort of reform school I was told, somewhere in Suffolk. But I didn’t much care where it was. I’d never felt more miserable in all my life. Only one thing bucked me up on that horrible journey. It was something Miss West had said about me in the court: “He’s like all of us. He just needs to feel good about himself. He’s got good in him, I know he has. He needs a second chance. All I’m asking is that you give him that chance. He’ll come right one day, you’ll see.”
I kept her words in my head the whole way. Truth be told, I’ve kept them in my head my whole life.
There were a dozen or more of us in that Black Maria van, all lads about my age, all bad lads. None of us spoke a word the whole way. Half an hour after we arrived, they took us into the gym and told us to change into the blue uniforms they’d given us. Then in he came.
“My name’s Sir,” he barked. We found out later that he did have a proper name, Mr Roley. He looked a bit like Mr Mortimer, small with a neat little moustache under his nose, a bit like Hitler’s I thought, except it was ginger. He had a voice like a trombone. We huddled together like a flock of sheep, all of us afraid. He looked at us and shook his head in disgust. “Every one of you is a bad apple. Rotten ap
Ten of the best with a cane he gave me, stretched over the wooden vaulting horse. Worst beating I ever had. It hurt like hell, but I never let on. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. It went on hurting for days afterwards. But when all’s said and done, I reckon it was all my fault in the first place. I shouldn’t have been at the front, should I?
I can tell you that during those first weeks locked up in Borstal I did an awful lot of hard thinking. My head was full of questions that I couldn’t answer. How did I get to be here? Was this how I was going to spend the rest of my life from now on, behind the walls of a prison, shut off from the rest of the world? Which was I, stupid or bad, or both? Or was Miss West right? Did I have some good in me?