A Horse Called Hero Read online

  Mrs Sprig turned to them and said, ‘I don’t expect you’ve been to the countryside before?’

  She paused, ready to enjoy the negative she expected. Dodo bridled and remained silent. Mrs Sprig chuckled, pleased that the city children, though cleaner than she’d expected, might conform in other respects to her expectations.

  ‘It’s got horses,’ said Wolfie. ‘The countryside has horses.’

  Mrs Sprig led them through the dark, to the back of the building where her pony and trap sat waiting. ‘There’s a blanket in the back. It’s a bit of a way and the pony’s old.’

  They climbed up and she tucked the blanket around them.

  ‘I expect your father’s away fighting, is he?’

  Wolfie felt Dodo flinch, saw her turn her head. They said nothing.

  ‘I hope you’ll be tidy and quiet children,’ said Mrs Sprig as they set off. ‘You’re to start at school tomorrow, they say.’

  Wolfie turned to Dodo in horror and echoed, ‘School?’

  They were both silent, neither having contemplated the possibility of school in the countryside.

  ‘I have responsibilities to the church and the parish and I’m sure you’ll want to respect my position in the community,’ continued Mrs Sprig.

  Again the children said nothing, huddling together, tired and cold.

  They had no light of their own, but Mrs Sprig’s pony knew her way and they rumbled through the dark along an unmade road that curved tightly through a wooded valley, then climbed out on to open moor. Through mizzle silvered by fleeting moonlight, they glimpsed the dark curves of distant hills outlined against the darker sky.

  Occasional rifts in the cloud bathed the bare moor in a ghostly light. Drizzle billowed like smoke drifts. Wind-bitten thorns grasped stubbornly at the bony hill.

  They crossed the brow of a hill and the cart took a plunge, unexpected and steep. Below to the right huddled a coven of gnarled and twisted trees, blacker than the black sky. The trap slowed, Mrs Sprig pulling hard on the rein, turning her head to them. A light flickered between the fragile, intricate branching. Wolfie clasped Dodo – she’d seen it too – they’d all seen it: amidst the gnarled joints and claws of the thorn trees, a beam, ghostly and floating as though not borne by any human hand. Again it flickered, and swam, fast as a phantom, uncovered perhaps by a coat caught in the wind, leaking light where it shouldn’t, revealing a head of white hair, a white face strangely blotched on one side.

  The light died. But that white face and white hair, the flickering beam, had left the moor stiller and stranger than before.

  Mrs Sprig turned back to the road. Clicking her tongue and whipping the pony on she was saying to herself, ‘Wild as a stoat, that one, wild as a stoat.’

  They dropped more steeply now, then took a turning through an arrangement of gates that had something to do with cattle. The track, sheltered by an overarching canopy, followed a tight, rising valley into a yard, the gate held loosely to its post with twine. The yard, half mud, half cobbled, was formed on one side by a house that had, once upon a time, burrowed itself into the hillside, and clung there obstinately ever since.

  ‘Dodo, can we go home tomorrow?’ whispered Wolfie.

  Chapter Five

  Wolfie and Dodo crept downstairs to the big room at the back of the cottage. Mrs Sprig was fussing about at the kitchen range. She hurried them to a huge scrubbed table and they sat quickly, sensing that she liked everything and everyone to be in their place at all times.

  Wolfie stared at the huge open fireplace, the hearth oven set into it, the iron cooking pots on chimney hooks above. He thought if Spud were here, she’d be sniffing and harrumphing at everything. Mrs Sprig placed two bowls on the table, each with a slice of bread in it. She took the milk jug and poured milk over the bread, then thick cream, from a second jug, over the top.

  ‘What’s that?’ whispered Wolfie in alarm at such a dish, in amazement at the cream and milk.

  ‘Sops,’ said Mrs Sprig with pride.

  Dodo wondered what Spud would think about so much fresh milk and cream in the countryside. They ate cautiously, then finding it delicious, ate on.

  Outside there was a patter of unshod hoofs on cobble, and a greeting whinny from Mrs Sprig’s pony.

  ‘That’ll be Mary with the post,’ said Mrs Sprig, folding a dishcloth, corner to corner. ‘Early with the mail today – she’s probably got something from my Henry.’ Then she added to herself, ‘Or maybe wanting to get a look at the London children. Nosy old Mary.’

  Mary pushed open the door, placed a newspaper on the dairy slab by the door and approached the table, surveying Dodo and Wolfie from a distance as though they were exhibits. She was large and shapeless, her eyes half buried by her cheeks. Dodo felt for the pony that carried Mary and her mailbag from house to house.

  ‘I’m to collect mine next week,’ she said to Mrs Sprig, her gimlet eyes continuing their minute inspection of the children. ‘One, I’m taking.’ She circumnavigated them as if to avoid contagion.

  ‘School. Hurry or you’ll be late,’ twittered Mrs Sprig. ‘Hurry. End of the drive, right, up the hill and down the hill.’

  ‘School, Wolfie, get your coat.’ Relieved to escape the prying Mary, Dodo took their bowls to the sink and collected their coats from the door.

  At the end of the lane, Wolfie looked up the hill and sighed, ‘Why are the hills so big in the country?’

  ‘We must write to Spud and tell her where we are,’ said Dodo.

  A group of children – four of them – emerged on to the lane from a turning higher up.

  ‘Let’s follow them,’ said Dodo.

  They hung back shyly, a few steps behind. At the top of the hill, the tallest, a boy, stopped and turned, the others then stopping and turning too, one after the other. Dodo and Wolfie hesitated, conscious of their soft London shoes, their soft London coats. They moved hesitantly on.

  ‘Them’retheHollowcombe onesascamelastnight,’ said one of the girls, all of them staring as though Dodo and Wolfie were Zulus suddenly landed amidst them. ‘Them’re everywhere, Mum says. Nowhere to put ’em all.’

  One by one they turned and walked on, caught up in their own affairs, as tribal and incurious as sheep hefted to a particular hill.

  Wolfie reached for a small dark bauble in the hedgerow. ‘Blueberries,’ he said happily, a black stream down his chin, ‘There aren’t any blueberries in Kensington Gardens.’

  ‘I’ll write to Spud today and tell her where we are,’ said Dodo thoughtfully.

  ‘Will she come and take us away?’

  ‘No, she won’t, but at least she’ll know where to write to us.’

  ‘It’s good we’re all in the same classroom,’ said Wolfie on the way home.

  There’d been other London children there, the single schoolroom crammed to the walls.

  ‘No it’s not. It’s hopeless. Forty children in one class. How can I learn anything?’

  ‘I like Miss Lamb, Dodo. The teacher is nice but I don’t like sitting on the floor.’

  Dodo smiled at him. He was right, Miss Lamb was nice. The Causey girls had been nice too. They’d been on the lane in the morning. Chrissie was Dodo’s age and she’d been friendly once they’d got to school.

  Three days passed. Dodo hadn’t yet received a reply to her letter to Spud.

  ‘Hurry or you’ll be late,’ said Mrs Sprig at breakfast. Dodo toyed with her sops, not wanting to leave before Mary came with the post. There was a whinny from the yard and seconds later, Mary burst in, looking briefly at the children, then turning her head, her nose a fraction higher than before. Dodo leaped to her feet – Mary had a letter in her hand, and was putting the newspaper down, as usual, on the dairy slab. Mrs Sprig was bobbing lightly on her toes, bird-like.

  ‘Is that from Henry?’ she asked. ‘Go on, Dorothy, put the kettle on for Mary, she’ll be wanting a cup of tea I should think.’

  ‘No, nothing for you, Cousin Marigold.’

  Wolfi
e giggled. Marigold!

  ‘Shh,’ hissed Dodo, then hesitated, stretching out a hand, hoping to be given the envelope. She saw Marigold Sprig’s arms fall deflated to her sides, her face suddenly vulnerable and childlike. Mary was a little cruel to her cousin, thought Dodo, at the same time watching the envelope that Mary held proprietorially.

  ‘This’ll be for the London children,’ said Mary, turning the envelope over carefully, talking as though the children were not there. Mrs Sprig sank weakly on to the edge of the settle. Dodo and Wolfie both stepped towards Mary, hands outstretched. She turned the envelope over once more, then held it out, midway between the two of them. ‘Wolfgang and Dorothy Revel, here’s your letter.’

  She relinquished it. Dodo grabbed at it and started for the door. Mary turned back to Mrs Sprig, talking still as though the children weren’t there. ‘How do you know, Marigold, what you’ve got in your house, where they’re from? With a name like that! Wolfgang. Think about it, Cousin Marigold, is it safe?’

  Marigold’s lips formed a thin ‘O’ of enquiry, then quivered as she whispered,

  ‘What do you mean, Mary?’

  ‘Can I have it, can I have it?’ Wolfie was jumping up and down. ‘Is someone coming to get us?’

  ‘German,’ hissed Mary. ‘It’s a German name. Wolfgang,’ Mary repeated meaningfully.

  Dodo, reaching for her coat, froze, but Wolfie retorted, ‘Wolfgang was Mother’s father’s name. From many-times-Great-Grampa.’

  Dodo grabbed two coats and hissed, ‘Shut up, Wolfie. Come on.’

  She dragged him to the door, throwing his coat over his shoulders. From the doorway, manhandled by his sister, but undaunted, Wolfie continued, ‘Many-times-great-Grampa was the General of Quebec.’

  Mary sniffed. ‘No manners, them London children.’ She established herself comfortably on the settle by the fire and took a sip of her tea. ‘I’ve asked for a girl – I’m not being given anything like what you’ve been given. I need to know what sort they are.’

  Wolfie and Dodo ran out on to the lane and, at a comfortable distance from Mary and Marigold, threw themselves on to the bank. She held the envelope in trembling hands, turning it over and over.

  ‘Hurry – hurry – open it,’ Wolfie was saying, but she’d paused at a distant tapping sound. Watching the lane warily, she could see nothing except the hedges shining in the silvery light. Beyond them, the primal hills, all ochre and russet. As they waited and listened, it grew to a drumming, a thunder, then a percussion of steel ringing on tarmac. The noise echoed and reverberated up the high-sided lane. They scrambled on to the bank, waited, trying to decipher it.

  ‘Horses,’ said Wolfie, breath held. ‘It’s horses.’

  The clattering grew and filled the air. They picked out the rasp of leather and jingling bridles. They squirmed higher, into a gap in the hedge, feeling as foolish in the still, silver morning, as sheep stuck in a fence.

  A torrent of huge, muscular hounds, all white-and-tan coats and pink tongues, surged down the lane. Then, behind them, horses appeared, heaving, coats glistening, breath steaming, clattering down at an easy canter. Wolfie caught his breath, transfixed by the splendour of it, by the weight of straining animal power, the flashes of scarlet, the bulk of bone and muscle.

  ‘Morning . . . Morning . . . Morning,’ said each and every rider, touching a hand to his hat as he passed.

  There was a shout from above: ‘Master on the left, Master on the left!’

  The message passed downhill from rider to rider, and the streaming, mud-splattered beasts were pulled over to the bank against which Dodo and Wolfie lay pressed.

  Wolfie pointed to a rider in scarlet galloping down. ‘Quite good,’ he said grudgingly. ‘A dark muzzle, a silver tail . . . That grey is quite good . . .’

  The rider caught sight of them there in the hedge, opposite the turning to Hollowcombe, and pulled up the handsome grey. Horses, live and tense, snorting and stamping, scrambled to avoid piling into one another behind the master.

  ‘Morning.’ The Master touched his hat. ‘Are you the London ones at Hollowcombe?’

  Dodo nodded.

  ‘Knacker’s cart. Tell Mrs Sprig it’ll be there this afternoon.’ Touching his hat to them again, he spurred the grey on.

  ‘That eye is not right. A good horse must have a big dark eye,’ said Wolfie. ‘Pa says so. Even a light horse must have a dark eye.’

  ‘Knacker’s cart?’ whispered Dodo.

  Hot animal breath lingered in the air after the riders left and the lane cleared.

  ‘What does he mean, “knacker’s cart”?’ Dodo asked again, but she was bending over the envelope now. ‘From Spud,’ she said, biting her lip. Her hands shook a little as she opened it and read, scanning it quickly. She looked up and shrieked, ‘He’s home! Wolfie – he’s back – he’s back – Pa’s . . .’

  She grabbed Wolfie, hugging him, the whole of her shaking with relief and release, tears in her eyes and on her cheeks.

  ‘What does he say, Dodo?’

  Wolfie snatched at the letter. Dodo snatched it back.

  ‘Wait, Wolfie, I’ll read it.’

  ‘Is he coming, Dodo, is he coming to get us?’ Dodo read:

  Dear Dodo & Wolfie,

  Your father’s back. He’s gone directly to his regiment. He’ll write to you as soon as he can but wanted you to know immediately that he’s here, and how very much he loves you.

  I hope you are enjoying the country and that your new clothes are keeping you warm and dry. I am working in a factory making barrage balloons.

  Spud

  ‘Shall we not go to school?’ asked Wolfie hopefully. ‘Perhaps we don’t need to go to school here any more . . . we can go back to London.’

  ‘Why does he have to go to his regiment?’ wondered Dodo. She read the letter again. Spud’s letter was full of holes, full of things unsaid, reserved and chilly. Dodo remembered her conversation with Dora. Something was wrong; Pa was alive, as Wolfie had always known he’d be, but something was wrong.

  ‘I’ll write to Pa and tell him to take us home,’ said Wolfie, fishing in his bag for a pencil. He found a piece of paper, and, eventually, a pencil stub.

  Dear Pa,

  I don’t like Mrs Sprig. I am glad you’re back. Will they give you another medal? Please take us home. Spud made us go to the country when we didn’t want to.

  Love, Wolfie.

  Dodo folded both letters thoughtfully and put them in her pocket.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Can we go to London?’ Wolfie asked again that afternoon as they turned off the lane on to the Hollowcombe track.

  ‘We can’t go if Pa’s still in his barracks.’

  ‘He’ll get leave,’ said Wolfie. ‘You always get leave when you come home. And I don’t really like Mrs Prig.’

  ‘Sprig,’ said Dodo, setting off, trailing a hand along on a wire that was attached intermittently to wooden posts, all of them keeling like masts in a high sea. She stopped at a field gate, laying her forearms on it, resting her head, lost in thought about Pa.

  ‘I want to see Pa,’ said Wolfie, joining her. He waited, his eyes close to the sodden wood, examining the surface of it, all a filigree of emerald moss and silver lichen. ‘Look, Dodo, it’s all green and gold and silver, like a . . . like a . . . like something in church.’ He bent to study a damp and rotten stump, his eye caught by a strange sprouting of yellow and orange growths, weird as an elfin garden. After a while he looked up. ‘I just want to go home,’ he said.

  ‘WOLFIE!’ said Dodo. ‘We can’t go to London. Spud isn’t there. She’s making balloons,’ she added, a little resentfully. ‘And she doesn’t want us. Anyway, it’s hopeless talking to you. Number one because you’re a boy, and number two because you’re only eight and for both of those reasons, there’s no point—’

  ‘I will be nine—’

  ‘Your age will improve, slowly year on year, but for your being a boy there’s no remedy . . .’ She broke off an
d looked up at a rushing, whispering sound overhead. A dark, packed mass swooped low over the field gate with a mighty gusting, as if marking Wolfie and Dodo out for a premonition. It rose and widened and spread. A little spooked, Dodo caught Wolfie’s hand, feeling again, as her thoughts turned to Pa, the shadow at the centre of her joy that he was home.

  ‘Starlings,’ said Wolfie as the torrent soared over the brow of the hill.

  Dodo turned away from the gate to go, but stopped as she heard a new sound, the skitter and patter of unshod hoofs on the mud and stone track. A lanky figure, bareback on a stout pony, legs almost to the ground, was approaching, a sheep slung across the pony’s neck.

  ‘A sheep,’ said Wolfie, his voice wide with astonishment. ‘There’s a sheep on it . . .’

  The pony drew close and they both started, arch as cats, as they saw the white hair, the red birthmark on the left cheek.

  ‘That’s him – it was him!’ Wolfie said, putting a hand to his own left cheek.

  Dodo scowled at him and he lowered it, embarrassed, as the pony came to a disorderly, snorting halt right beside them. Wolfie looked out sideways under truculent half-lowered lids at the violent red mark on the pale skin.

  ‘You from Hollowcombe?’

  They nodded, wary, in both their minds the flickering, phantom lamp on the moor.

  ‘I’m Ned . . . Ned Jervis. From Thorne. You all right at Hollowcombe? Mrs Sprig lookin’ after you then?’ His tone was friendly, his smile wide, bright-eyed with amusement. ‘We’ll be up this way with the knacker’s cart later. Too wet, last week, couldn’t get up there. Leave the top gate open.’

  ‘What’s a knacker’s cart?’ Wolfie asked. And he knew Dodo was glad he’d asked because she didn’t know either.

  ‘For the old horse.’

  ‘Where’s a horse?’ asked Wolfie. ‘Where’s a horse?’

  ‘In top field. They left her behind, Bassetts did, just left her behind when they left Windwistle. Irish mare. Won’t hunt again an’ll ’ave to shoot her for the hounds.’

  ‘Savages,’ said Dodo, raising her head slowly, now looking him square in the eyes in disgust.