Billy the Kid Read online

  And it was true. It was in a bit of a state. I’d become a bit of a jackdaw. In ten years I’d never thrown anything out.

  “I’ve had just about enough,” she said. “I’m throwing everything into the garden, the whole lot. And while you’re about it, you can shave off that filthy beard, and have a bath, and cut your nails.”

  She set about emptying my whole cabin into the garden, scattering everything all over the grass. By the time she had finished she was in tears. I had to have a big bonfire, she said, and burn the lot. I chucked out all my empty bottles, shaved off my beard, had a bath and cut my nails. That evening sitting round the kitchen table they came to an agreement with me. They were both very stern. They would let me stay, but only under certain conditions. I would be allowed two beers a day, one in the morning and one in the evening. They would bring it to me. I was never ever to buy a drink for myself again. I had to do my teeth twice a day, have a bath once a day and keep my clothes clean. I agreed, and I stayed. Best thing I ever did. I kept the garden tidy for them, looked after the house, even did a bit of the cooking – I wasn’t bad either. And little Sam was my pride and joy. Every day we’d be out in the park practising. I taught him all the skills I knew, trained him so he could run as fast as a whippet – he was small like me. I taught him to be tough as a terrier too. He was soon scoring goals for his school, out on the wing, the right wing, and he was good enough now to go for training at Chelsea. At seventeen he was playing in the Chelsea Reserves, and I was there seven years ago with Maddy and Jamie when he ran out for Chelsea for the first time. Proudest day of my life that was. Chelsea lost, but I didn’t care.

  Better not lose this afternoon. Come on, Billy, up you get. You’d best be on your way. Kick-off won’t wait for you. Back to my room first and get into my finery. Maddy says I look good in my scarlet uniform, a knock out, she says. The old knee’s a bit stiff today. It’s always better when I get walking. My bottom’s numb. Ruddy hard, that bench.

  Who knows what causes these things – too much excitement maybe, but the next day, I had a bit of a stroke. Nothing much, the doctor said, but I’d have to take it easy. It affected my eyesight more than anything else – all the peripheries are still a bit fuzzy. I’d have been quite happy staying where I was in the cabin, but it was winter and Maddy wouldn’t hear of it. For a while I found myself living again in the basement in Jamie’s studio. But we all knew that couldn’t go on for ever. It was Jamie who found a way out of it, a way that suited us all perfectly – the Royal Hospital Chelsea: a sort of retirement home for old soldiers. He’d found out all about it. It was only just down the road. They had over 300 old soldiers in there, all beautifully looked after, everything an old fellow like me could wish for.

  “You’re an old soldier,” he said. “And you’ve got a disability pension, so you’d qualify. I’ve checked. All you have to do is have an interview.”

  To be honest I wasn’t all that happy with the idea at first. But when I saw the place I changed my mind. I’d have my own cubicle, three good meals a day and everything provided. And best of all, it wasn’t that far from Chelsea Football Club. I had my interview with the Adjutant Colonel and the Captain of Invalides. I liked them and they seemed to like me. I had a three-day stay, sleeping there and eating there, just to see how I got on. I loved every minute of it. I had a lot of fellows to talk to and I got on well with them, but I did miss home and Sam and Jamie and Maddy. I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to stay there for good and all.

  I was sitting in the sunshine trying to work it all out when someone sat down beside me – one of the pensioners in his scarlet uniform. He was looking at me, studying me. After a while he said, “Were you a prisoner in Italy during the war?”

  “Yes,” I said. I couldn’t see him very well with the sun behind him.

  “It’s Robbie, Billy. Don’t you remember me?”

  We did a lot of thumping of shoulders, and we shed a tear or two as well. That decided me. Within a month I moved in and became a Chelsea Pensioner. I’d seen them about in their scarlet coats – some of them always come to watch Chelsea – and always thought how fine they looked. Now I’m one of them. And what a life of Riley I have. I paint a bit, when my eyes aren’t too fuzzy, and I play a lot of bowls with Robbie. He hasn’t changed, not one bit. He still looks after me as if I was his little brother. And he soon spread it around who I’d been when I was a young man. I can’t think why, but he’s really proud of me. So now everyone calls me ‘Billy the Kid’ again. Funny how things come around.

  I eat like a horse, go home every Sunday for lunch to see the family, and do just what I like – but I never ever have more than two beers a day. And every home game I’m there down at the Shed End at Chelsea watching Sam play. He’s the best winger they’ve ever had, and he’s played twenty-five times for England. He’s not perfect though. Without telling me he went and told them who I was down at the club and they made a bit of a fuss of me. I was made an honorary life member and given my seat at the Shed End free for the rest of my life. It was in all the newspapers. So down at Chelsea they all know who I am now. I’m quite famous in a sort of a way, and I like that. In fact, I like that a lot.

  I can hear the crowd inside the ground now, Joe. The streets are packed, like a river of blue all flowing towards Chelsea. They’re a rowdy mob, always were, but friendly.

  Something’s up, Joe.

  I don’t know what, but something’s up. That Gianluca Vialli – I told you about him, best player-manager there ever was, Italian fellow, not much hair – well, he’s just come out to meet me. He just shook my hand. I’m not sure what’s going on. He’s taking me down to the players’ dressing room, he says. Always the same smell in a dressing room – embrocation, sweat, boots. They’re all clapping me, Joe. They’re all here, all my heroes, Zola, Jody, Wisey, Le Saux, Desailly, Sam, and they’re singing me Happy Birthday. Sam’s given me the match programme. I’m on the front cover! It was Sam. Sam set this whole thing up, the beggar. I’ve got tears in my eyes and they won’t stop coming. Zola’s given me the match ball. They want me to lead the team out onto the field. I’m going to be walking out there, Joe, and you’re going to be with me all the way, down the tunnel and out into the light, out into the noise. And they’re chanting, Joe, they’re chanting,

  “Billy, Billy the Kid! Billy, Billy the Kid!”

  Jamie’s here and Maddy, and Robbie too. They all knew about it. So-and-sos! All a conspiracy, a lovely conspiracy. It’s a long walk out, but I want it to last for ever and ever. They’re singing Happy Birthday now, and they’ve got me up on the big screens.

  I’ll do a fancy dribble around Wisey, and then I’ll go back to my seat in the Shed End. I can still dribble a little, enough to make them cheer.

  Are you listening, Joe? Are you watching? Maybe you’re proud of me again now. I hope so.

  If you enjoyed Billy the Kid, check out these other great Michael Morpurgo titles.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MICHAEL MORPURGO OBE is one of Britain’s best-loved writers for children. He has written over 100 books and won many prizes, including the Smarties Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award and the Whitbread Award. His recent bestselling novels include Shadow, An Elephant in the Garden and Born to Run.

  Michael’s stories have been adapted numerous times for stage and screen, and he was Children’s Laureate from 2003 to 2005, a role which took him all over the country to inspire children with the joy of reading stories.

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  The Battle of the Somme

  One of the most bloody battles of the First World War (1914–1918). In July 1916 after a long artillery barrage the British Army attacked the German trenches on the Somme River in Northern France. But the Germans were well dug in, well prepared. The British marched forward into a hail of bullets. On the first day of the battle the British Army lost 60,000 men, killed or woun
ded, the worst losses ever suffered by the British Army in a single day. Such bravery and such disasters caused one German general to say of the British soldiers that they were “lions led by donkeys”.

  Adolf Hitler

  Founder and leader of the National Socialist Party (the Nazi Party), he was elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Very soon he assumed dictatorial powers and began to build up the German armed forces. It was his invasions of the neighbouring states of Austria, Czechoslovakia and then Poland that led Britain to declare war on Germany in September 1939. Later, his invasion of the Soviet Union (the Russian Empire) brought that country into the war. When Japan, an ally of Germany, attacked the United States, the war became truly global. It is thought that over 30 million people died in the Second World War. Hitler himself committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin in May of 1945 as the city was being overwhelmed by the Soviet army.

  The ‘phoney war’

  For some months after the declaration of war on September 3rd 1939, very little seemed to happen. It was in 1940 with Hitler’s invasions of France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Norway, and with the beginning of aerial bombardment of Britain, that the war began to feel like a real war.

  Dunkirk

  The Second World War (1939–1945) began with a series of defeats for the Allies. When the Germans invaded France and Belgium and Holland in the summer of 1940, their advance was so swift that they rolled the Allies back to the English Channel within weeks. At Dunkirk, the remnants of the Allied armies were trapped. The only way out was the sea. Over a quarter of a million men were evacuated by an armada of little ships sent over from England; but thousands were killed on the beaches, or taken prisoner.

  Tobruk

  Here, in this port on the North African coast in June 1942, yet again a British army found itself driven back by German tanks. Thousands of soldiers were cut off and captured.

  POW Camps

  Prisoner-of-war camps were set up to confine captured soldiers of all sides. Conditions were often very harsh, and the food poor and scarce. Many soldiers spent five long years shut up in these camps.

  The Land Army

  With so many farmers and agricultural workers away fighting in the war, and with the ever-increasing need for home-grown food (so many ships were being sunk that the supply of imported food was all but halted), many women volunteered to go out in the country and work on the land – the Land Army.

  Resistance Fighters

  In every occupied country in Europe groups of resistance fighters sprang up. In the south of France they were known as the ‘Maquis’, in Italy ‘Partisans’. Both harried the German occupying forces in any way they could, and many thousands of resistance fighters lost their lives.

  Italy and the War

  In 1939 the Italians under their dictator Mussolini allied themselves with the Germans under Hitler. However, in 1943 the Italians removed Mussolini from power, signed an armistice and came out of the war. Hitler at once invaded them from the north and soon occupied all of Italy. The Allied armies landed in the south to drive the German army out, and in the summer of 1944 at last liberated the capital city, Rome.

  The V-2 Rocket

  In 1945, with the war coming to an end, Hitler tried one last time to snatch victory from defeat. In order to terrify Britain into submission, he launched a guided missile attack on London – V-2 rockets or flying bombs. They did great damage, but for Hitler it was too little too late.

  Belsen

  As Europe was being liberated by the Russians from the east, from the west by the Allies, dreadful discoveries were made – concentration camps where the Germans had systematically set out to exterminate Jews, gypsies, the mentally ill, anyone they considered undesirable. Millions of men, women and children perished in these camps, some in gas chambers, some by deliberate neglect, by starvation and disease. It was the British army that came across Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in north-west Germany. Here they discovered 10,000 unburned bodies and the mass graves of 40,000 more. Of the 30,000 still alive when the soldiers arrived, most were too weak to survive, and died soon after. Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945 only weeks before the camp was liberated.

  The Royal Hospital, Chelsea

  Founded by Charles II in the seventeenth century, the Royal Hospital houses and cares for 350 Chelsea Pensioners, all old soldiers. If you go to Chelsea you may see them walking the streets in their scarlet coats. They wear scarlet coats as their best or ‘dress’ uniforms, and blue coats for everyday wear. Some of them go to watch Chelsea play on Saturdays at Stamford Bridge. One of them, I noticed, sometimes sits all on his own behind the goal at the Shed End.

  The Royal Army Medical Corps

  The army regiment whose task it is to care for wounded and sick soldiers. This task extends, of course, to looking after civilians and refugees caught up in war.

  Chelsea Football Club

  Chelsea Football Club has played at Stamford Bridge ground since it was formed in 1905.

  The club gives Chelsea Pensioners 8 free seats in the Directors’ Box for every home game. The Pensioners draw lots for the tickets but one old soldier who wants to see every game has his own season ticket at the Shed End.

  And lastly…

  ‘Toad in the hole’

  Sausages in batter roasted in the oven. My favourite meal when I was little. Yummy. Try it!

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  Kaspar

  Born to Run

  Alone on a Wide Wide Sea

  The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips

  Private Peaceful

  The Butterfly Lion

  Cool!

  Toro! Toro!

  Dear Olly

  The Dancing Bear

  Farm Boy

  Mudpuddle Farm stories

  (highly illustrated for younger readers):

  Cock-a-Doodle-Doo

  Pigs Might Fly!

  Alien Invasion

  COPYRIGHT

  First published in Great Britain in 2000 by Pavilion Books Limited

  This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2002

  HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

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  Text copyright © Michael Morpurgo 2000

  Illustrations copyright © Michael Foreman 2000

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  The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified

  as author and illustrator of this work.

  Source ISBN 9780007105472

  Ebook Edition © MARCH 2014 ISBN 9780007374199

  Version 2014-01-31

  HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

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