A Horse Called Hero Page 5

  Mrs Sprig was downstairs, already busy. The fire was lit under the round-bottomed copper, Mrs Sprig all a fever of washing and boiling. Dodo eyed the front door and hesitated.

  ‘Where’s Wolfgang? Tell him to hurry,’ called Mrs Sprig’s voice from a cloud of steaming and boiling laundry in the small room beyond the kitchen. Dodo glanced again at the door. It was flung open and Wolfie erupted into the room, straw in his hair, straw clinging to his pyjamas. Mrs Sprig stepped into the kitchen, a wet sheet in her arms, and looked at him, open-mouthed.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded.

  Wolfie avoided her and sat quickly on the bench at the table. Dodo sat beside him and hurriedly picked out some straw from his hair.

  ‘Can I ask . . . ?’ began Mrs Sprig.

  But Wolfie could contain himself no longer. ‘Dodo! Dodo!’ he burst out. ‘He ate it all, all of it . . .’

  ‘Who ate what?’

  ‘Hero – there’s a – I’ve got a foal.’

  ‘Go and get dressed, Wolfie.’ Dodo was pushing him towards the stairs.

  Still clutching her sheet to her bosom, Mrs Sprig followed them to the foot of the stairs and watched him go up, her mouth hanging open. ‘Can’t have this, just can’t have all this . . . not knowing what’s going on in my own house . . .’

  Later that afternoon in the kitchen, after he’d visited Hero at Windwistle, Wolfie hissed, ‘He drank from a bucket, all of it, a whole bucket.’

  ‘What bucket?’ whispered Dodo.

  ‘I don’t know – a whole bucket – but he drank all of it.’ Wolfie opened his arms wide to express the great quantity of milk consumed by Hero.

  ‘But who gave you a bucket of milk?’ hissed Dodo.

  Wolfie lowered his eyes. ‘I don’t know, but it was definitely for Hero, because it was left outside his stable.’

  ‘It must have been Ned,’ said Dodo.

  Wolfie wondered what Spud would think about so much fresh milk being left outside horses’ doors, then his head turned to the basket of eggs that was accumulating in a basket by the larder door.

  ‘My son Henry will be home on leave soon,’ said Mrs Sprig, intercepting Wolfie’s glance.

  ‘Has Henry got a medal?’ asked Wolfie.

  ‘Shut up, Wolfie,’ said Dodo.

  The eggs are for Henry, thought Wolfie resentfully. Mrs Sprig was a squirrel, just like Dodo said. A squirrel with a very strong tendency to hoard.

  Later, he perched on the bedroom with a postcard and a pencil. He’d chosen a print of a mounted huntsman, a bugle to his lips, a group of staghounds at heel.

  Dear Pa

  You must come here. I have a horse. He is grey. He has dark eyes. He has no mother so he has to drink condensed milk or goat’s milk which is not very nice. There is a shop. It has pear drops. It is easy to buy eggs but they only had one tin of condensed milk and Hero has drunk it all. Please come soon. Please bring tins of milk. We are with Mrs Sprig in Hollowcombe. she is not very nice to us.

  Love, Wolfie

  Ps You must come very soon. He is called Hero after you, Pa. He likes honey too.

  PPs I am in the same class as Dodo. I like the school here.

  A week later, the letter that Dodo both longed for and feared was waiting for them on their return from school.

  ‘Pa!’ Wolfie shouted. ‘It’s from Pa!’ They took it up to Windwistle and read it together there on the straw, as Hero wandered around, exploring everything with his muzzle, nuzzling Wolfie for food.

  ‘My darling children . . .’ Dodo read aloud:

  I’ve missed you so very much.

  Honey is very important for a young horse, Wolfie, especially if he didn’t feed from his dam. A good grey will have a silver tip to his tail. Does Hero have that?

  Dodo, do you have paints and brushes there? Shall I send you some? Ma used to holiday somewhere close to where you are. I’ll look up the name of the house one day – Spud knows where Ma’s papers are but she’s away making barrage balloons somewhere. I don’t think she enjoyed the bombs in London.

  It may be a while before I See you –

  Dodo’s voice grew quiet and rushed. Wolfie listened, his eyes following Hero.

  – but there is something I must tell you, something that will come as a shock to you both, but I know that I must tell you and that I must defend myself to you both.

  I’m at my regiment’s headquarters. I have handed myself in, and am being held here on suspicion of having committed an offence.

  Dodo read on to herself, almost whispering.

  I haven’t been charged with this offence and hope that I won’t be, though I will probably be questioned and have to go through a disciplinary procedure. Then, I think, I’ll be free and able to see you both and perhaps be allowed to take some non-combatant work.

  ‘What is it Dodo, what’s “dissip—”’ Wolfie was trying to snatch the paper, annoyed by the long words of it.

  This could all take rather a long time and I won’t be allowed to see you, nor anyone, nor allowed to leave here until it’s over.

  I’m glad that Spud was sensible and sent you to the country, and thrilled that you have a horse. Wolfie, it is a miraculous thing to watch a horse grow. They do it almost before your eyes – they build bone and muscle fast – at almost three pounds a day. Run your hands up and down his legs, handle him as much as you can. Halter him within two weeks, start to train him at four. Talk to him all the time, it will make him happy and a happy horse is a most wonderful companion.

  I’ll write to you often.

  With all my love,

  Pa

  ‘Is he coming? When is—?’ Wolfie was beside himself.

  ‘No, Wolfie.’

  Dodo wound an arm around his shoulder.

  Charged. Offence. Disciplinary procedure. Suspicion. Questioned.

  The words shook in her head like knives. Pa? An ‘offence’? Pa? What had he done?

  ‘But is he coming? Didn’t he say he would come?’

  ‘No, Wolfie, not for a while.’

  ‘But is he going back to fight?’

  ‘No . . .’

  After a few minutes, Wolfie said, ‘I do do that, I do talk to him, all the time.’

  Chapter Nine

  Two days passed.

  Dodo, who’d begun to enjoy school and whose drawing was thriving under Miss Lamb’s tutelage, became more friendly with Chrissie Causey, though she talked to no one about Pa. To whom could she talk? she wondered, perhaps Miss Lamb, but everyone here seemed to know everything almost before it had happened and everyone was related to everyone else, so perhaps it was safer after all to talk to no one.

  She was grateful Wolfie had only the vaguest notion that anything was wrong. His conviction that Pa was beyond the reach of all petty things was immutable as the stars.

  Dodo ate little at breakfast, taking her bowl quietly to the sink and emptying it. She was keen to leave the house before Mary came. Mary might bring the post, but the ferrety look of her eyes, sharp and deep set in the smooth, shapeless face, made Dodo wary of her. She reached for her coat, pulled down Wolfie’s too, and his cap. If they left now, they’d get away before Mary came.

  ‘Hurry, Wolfie,’ she said from the door, but Mrs Sprig’s pony whinnied and there was an answering whinny from the lane. Mary dismounted, left her pony in the yard, untethered, and shouldered her way past Dodo into the house.

  ‘Marigold! Marigold!’ Mary scowled at Dodo, holding out a newspaper in the approximate direction of her cousin. ‘I told you, Marigold, told you it was dangerous.’ Now she was stabbing the paper with a plump forefinger. ‘Just don’t know what you’ve got in your house.’ Mary lifted her chin and waited as Mrs Sprig bent her head over The Daily Mail. Mrs Sprig looked up eventually and stared at the children in silence. Wolfie and Dodo tried to see what was in the paper.

  ‘Now sit down, Marigold,’ said Mary, ‘You’ll be wanting a cup of tea.’ Mrs Sprig let the paper fall to the floor and looked up at Mary, rou
nd-eyed with horror.

  There on the first page was a picture of Pa, of him and Ma on the day they married, and another, smaller picture beneath it, of Pa with his medal. Wolfie’s face brightened with sudden joy. He snatched up the paper.

  ‘Let them have it,’ said Mrs Sprig quietly.

  Dodo was dragging Wolfie to the door. Waiting beside it, Mary shut it meaningfully behind them. In the porch, Wolfie gazed at Pa, at his calm smiling eyes, at Ma.

  ‘Hero turned Deserter,’ Dodo mouthed. ‘VC Held Under Close Arrest in Barracks. Soldier, Scholar and Cavalry Ace to Face Questioning by Military Police.’

  Chapter Ten

  What had happened at Dunkirk? What had Pa done? Dodo asked herself for the hundredth time. She kicked pebbles as she walked. ‘Deserter’? Pa? Still reeling with the shock of it, she was silent. She’d not read the article to Wolfie, and he was now distracted by thoughts of Hero again.

  ‘I’ve got some sweet rations left, Dodo, I’ll buy you a sweet,’ offered Wolfie as they approached the village. ‘When I buy the honey, I’ll buy you a Torpedo and a card for Pa.’

  Dodo gave him a brief smile.

  ‘I’ll tell him that Hero is quick at standing up but doesn’t know how to lie down yet. And that he likes his neck scratched.’

  DodothoughtaboutMrsSprig,abouthowawkward it would be to go back to Hollowcombe. What would Mrs Sprig think about deserters? Would she be like Spud? But where else could they go? Pa was in his barracks and Spud was making balloons somewhere. She’d wanted to get rid of them, Dodo knew now, because of Pa. At the first whiff of a shadow over his name, Spud’s loyalty had evaporated.

  At the door to the Village Stores stood a roan mare loosely tied to a ring in the wall. Dodo tensed, seeing the pile of papers at the door, but it was only the Western Evening News, not The Daily Mail, and there was no picture of Pa on it. Wolfie inspected the mare, holding out his hand to her. He thought of Hero again and of something else he must tell Pa – that Hero wet his snout deeply in the milk. Pa had once said that a brave horse would always wet his snout deeply. The mare lowered her head to the small boy and, as Wolfie stroked the broad bone of her cheek, she closed her eyes at his touch, lowered her head and seemed to sigh.

  ‘A good sort,’ Wolfie announced loudly. ‘Pa would call that “a good sort”.’

  Dodo waited outside. She saw the church tower, grey and stern, the feathered ferns that nestled and roosted in the crevices. Beyond the old packhorse bridge, winding down the purple and gold common, was a troop of Home Guard. Like overgrown schoolboys, feet almost to the ground, they rode the dark hill ponies that were everywhere in these parts. Wolfie took no notice of ponies, Dodo mused. It was as though they were town pigeons or some other indifferent species. She, on the other hand, rather admired their ferocity and independence, their sure feet and rugged coats, but to her eye, they looked sweeter unmounted.

  Wolfie was taking his time so Dodo peered inside. Two women stood by the sacks of loose goods. They were silent, watching Wolfie. Wolfie, gloriously unaware, was on tiptoe by the shelf of canned goods, a hand reaching first to one sweet, then another.

  ‘Come on, Wolfgang, hurry.’ She used the name she always used to sound most stern.

  Wolfie was placing the sweets, six eggs and a postcard on the counter. The woman at the counter folded her arms and smiled a grim smile at the two women by the sacks. Wolfie asked for a penny stamp. He fumbled for coins, then dropped a clatter of them on the counter. She waited with a portentous smile and the sighing forbearance of all the saints. On tiptoe, Wolfie separated out the coins and began to count them.

  ‘One, two . . .’

  Certain he’d counted right, he pushed the pile towards her, pocketing the rest.

  ‘Come on, Wolfgang,’ called Dodo.

  The shopkeeper watched, with folded arms, in silence. Wolfie, bewildered, looked up at her, then began to count the coins again.

  ‘I will not,’ she began. ‘I, who have a husband and a brother in the army, will not accept the custom of families of deserters . . .’

  ‘What’s a “deser—”?’ began Wolfie.

  Dodo rushed in and grabbed his arm. ‘Wolfie. Come now.’

  Wolfie pulled away. ‘But—’

  ‘WOLFIE. COME ON.’

  ‘Come, come.’ A voice called from the back of the shop, where the Post Office scales were kept. Miss Lamb stepped out with a parcel in her hands.

  ‘But I haven’t got my sweets,’ said Wolfie to Dodo.

  ‘And I will not take your money.’

  The cash drawer was slammed shut.

  ‘Come, come,’ said Miss Lamb again. ‘He’s a child, Mrs Potter. You can’t refuse to serve a child. You can’t weigh the sins of the father on the son.’

  ‘I will not . . .’ began Mrs Potter, then, seeing the speaker, hesitated.

  ‘And how is your husband, Mrs Potter?’

  ‘How are things in the Catering Corps?’ continued the calm and pleasant voice of Miss Lamb as Dodo dragged Wolfie out. She marched him past the roan mare, and on to the bridge.

  ‘Is he injured? Is Pa injured?’ Wolfie was asking as she pulled.

  ‘No.’ Dodo stopped on the bridge, released his arm and took his hand. They stood in silence for a while.

  ‘Here, Wolfie!’

  They looked up. It was Miss Lamb on the roan mare, her hand extended. ‘Here’re your sweets and your card.’

  She smiled kindly, then urged the gentle roan mare into a trot.

  Wolfie turned to Dodo. ‘He’ll come down and see us before he goes back to war, he’ll see Hero, won’t he, Dodo?’

  She yanked him, swung him round to face her, her eyes burning. ‘He’ll never go back, Wolfie.’

  ‘But have we won . . . ?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Then why . . . ?’

  ‘He ran away, Wolfie. He RAN AWAY.’

  Wolfie stared up at her for a few seconds, then shook his hand free of hers. She spun round and marched away. When she turned to call him, from the other side of the bridge, she saw his brimming eyes, the trembling lower lip.

  ‘Isn’t he brave any more? Isn’t Pa—?’

  Dodo marched on. ‘Don’t you see?’ she said. ‘There’s a punishment for running away . . .’

  What the punishment was, Dodo wasn’t sure, but there was something she dimly remembered, something too terrible to frame in her mind.

  Wolfie stood alone on the bridge. His eyes were starry and fierce as he said, ‘No. . . No, he didn’t. Pa wouldn’t . . . ever.’

  Chapter Eleven

  At the start of the school day everyone huddled round the stove, the room filling with the friendly fug of steaming wool. Dodo, as one of the few older girls, was helping Miss Lamb collect books and pencils from a storeroom. Wolfie dropped his satchel and hung it on the pegs where the Causey sisters stood whispering.

  Miss Lamb rang the bell. Wolfie admired Miss Lamb. She wore tall lace-up boots and a tweed cape, and had what Pa called ‘a good, brave head’, by which he meant a strong nose and high forehead. Pa was keen on noses and foreheads.

  Dodo’s face turned white. As everyone took their places cross-legged on the floor, smallest at the front, oldest at the back, she remained, frozen, by the door. Wolfie followed her eyes. On her peg, next to where Dodo’s friend Chrissie Causey had been standing, was her school bag, the buckles undone, with a copy of the Daily Sketch poking out.

  Wolfie watched Dodo all day, saw her eyes flicker from her work to that bag on the peg. In the afternoon she sat a little apart from the rest of her age group, head bent over a drawing. She sat at the front, as close as she could to the teacher, and Wolfie knew that was because she felt safer there, that no one could say anything to her without Miss Lamb hearing. Wolfie was drawing a young horse. He didn’t like drawing, and, unlike Dodo, had no gift for it. If he did have to draw, he’d always draw a horse. Hero would whinny to him now when he heard Wolfie’s step, and he was thinking of that, longing to be
there, longing to hear that whinny.

  At the end of the day Dodo stayed where she was, bowing her head deeply over her paper as everyone raced to collect bags and coats and rushed out. She looked up as Wolfie approached and, seeing that the room was empty, she said, ‘No one’ll remember what Pa did once, no one will remember Moreuil Wood . . . They only know, Wolfie, they only know . . .’ She broke off, her anger confused by so much that she didn’t know. ‘They won’t talk to me, Wolfie. No one’ll talk to me . . .’

  Wolfie saw her flashing eyes, heard the anger in her voice and thought how her sunniness had gone, how she was a tangle of thorns, a box of darkness, all shredded inside.

  ‘They’ll call us names everywhere we go.’ She stared venomously at the bag on her peg, leaped up and stormed over to it. In the empty school room she unrolled the paper on the cooling stove and read in furious, halting words:

  DISGRACE OF CAPTAIN REVEL. OFFICER & V.C. UNDER SUSPICION OF DESERTION

  Dodo snatched up her bag and stormed out, Wolfie running along behind her, coat half on, half off, satchel unbuckled and trailing.

  They stayed with Hero for a long while. Wolfie added an egg to Hero’s bucket and stirred in some honey, hoping that the honey might take away the taste of goat. ‘See? He has a silver tip to his tail, and his eye is good and dark.’ Wolfie rumpled the soft milky skin of Hero’s muzzle. ‘And a dark mouth. That’s important for a grey.’

  Hero drank deeply and Wolfie looked on with pride. The foal didn’t need the honey or the eggs any more but it was kind to spoil an orphan who lived alone and had to drink goat’s milk.

  Dodo watched Wolfie, wondering what on earth would become of them both, where they’d go, who’d have them now, who would look after Hero.

  Wolfie picked an old dandy-brush off its nail by the door. It was soothing to brush Hero’s soft coat, to see the particles of dust flurry in the slanting light from the door. If you brushed hard and kept brushing it felt as though you could brush away the things you didn’t want.