Not Bad for a Bad Lad Read Online Free Page B

didn’t know where to go, nor what to do with myself. I couldn’t go home, because they didn’t want to see me any more – I can’t blame them, not really.
     
    For a couple of months I just wandered the streets getting to know all the other stray people – and there’s lots of them out there, believe you me – who were doing much the same thing as me, wandering the streets and wishing the days away. Some of them had been on the streets for years. I didn’t want to end up like them, but I knew that’s the way I was heading and I didn’t think there was much I could do about it.
     
    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 atthe 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