Free Not Bad for a Bad Lad by Michael Morpurgo Page B

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 caned me. It hurt, of course it did. But it was water off a duck’s back to me. By the time I was fourteen I’d left school behind me and found myself a part-time job in a garage, which was all right with me because I liked cars. But at nights I was out on the streets and getting myself into all sorts of trouble and strife.
     
    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 andsearched 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 waslearning 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