A Horse Called Hero (9 page)

Samuel shook his head. As he turned to the door, he saw an envelope on the mat that he’d missed in his rush.

‘We’ll guard them every day,’ Wolfie was saying. ‘Every day when we’re not at school.’

Samuel handed the envelope to Father Lamb. Wolfie leaped forward.

‘Is it another one from Pa?’ There was a Christmas card from Pa waiting to be opened on the table.

Samuel glanced at Father Lamb, shaking his head. ‘It came by hand.’

Father Lamb put the envelope on the Christmas breakfast table with the small group of envelopes that waited there. He embraced Samuel and wished him and his family a merry Christmas.

When Hettie and Dodo joined them, the fire was lit, the boiled eggs ready and waiting. Father Lamb said nothing about the missing ponies.

‘It’s lucky Hero’s not a London horse, isn’t it?’ Wolfie said as he ate his egg. ‘London horses don’t get honey and eggs.’

Hettie took an envelope from the pile on the table. ‘Ten pints is a lot of milk for one horse in a time of war and rationing,’ she said. ‘Please teach him to be a normal horse
and eat hay.’

Dodo thought it would be better when Hero ate hay, if the milk had to come from the home of Mary Jervis. Mary Jervis delivered the mail to Lilycombe, but she left it in the porch outside, never
coming in as she had at Hollowcombe.

Hettie read the card and stood it up on the table, picking up the envelope beneath.

‘At least he doesn’t eat eggs now,’ Dodo said.

‘Do you think Pa gets eggs . . . ?’

Wolfie’s voice shook a little and Hettie interrupted. ‘Look, there’s one for you both,’ she said, smiling. ‘And another. You open this one, Wolfie.’

‘From Pa,’ said Dodo, opening hers, and reading it out to Wolfie:

When Dodo looked up, Wolfie’s lip was wobbling. In his hand he held a greetings card with a sprig of holly on the front. On the inside there was no writing, only a
newspaper cutting pasted across both sides. A photograph showed Pa with the King, the medal in the King’s hands. Wolfie looked up, fighting back his tears, let the card fall and leaped up
from the table, pushing the door open and running out across the yard, ice splintering under his feet.

‘For the love of God, on today of all days?’ Father Lamb said again, taking it and reading it to himself:

Wolfie grappled with the icy bolt of the stable door, and fell sobbing into Hero’s box, a flood of grief and pain erupting over him. Hero nudged Wolfie, almost throwing
him off his feet. The two of them stood, nose to nose, Wolfie smiling now, weakly, through his tears. Like eskimos they rubbed noses, exchanged breath, Wolfie blowing into Hero’s nostrils,
Hero’s milky breath escaping in puffs over the tears on Wolfie’s cheeks. ‘
Learn him by heart
,’ Pa had said in one of his letters. ‘
Learn your horse by
heart
.’ Wolfie tangled his fingers into the deep grey mane, ran them along the ridge of Hero’s back. He breathed the sweet apple scent of straw and hay and breathed deep and laid
his head against Hero’s chest, letting his breath rise and fall, rise and fall with Hero’s. The tears dried on his cheeks, the raging and the churning inside of him calmed.

Scout paced restlessly along the wooden bar, returning to the spot closest to Hero, then pacing again.

When Wolfie looked up, Father Lamb was there, his arms resting on the stable door.

‘Wolfie . . .’ he began.

Wolfie hung his head, fighting for words. Finding none, he reached for a glistening icicle and snapped it violently. He held it in his bare hands, the cold of it sticking and burning his hands
raw. ‘They’ve taken it away, haven’t they? The King – he’s taken Pa’s medal away.’ His eyes were two swollen pools and his voice croaked.

Father Lamb turned the boy towards him and placed a hand on each shoulder.

‘Wolfie,’ he said, ‘what your pa did was immensely brave. In what will be perhaps the last cavalry charge in history, he led his men through
two
lines of machine guns
– did that not once, but twice. He galloped at those guns with nothing but a lance.’

Hero swung his head and nuzzled the boy for attention, his breath on the boy’s neck.

‘That takes unimaginable bravery. Whatever happens now, what he did that day, what he won that day, can never be taken away. A Victoria Cross can never be taken away, whatever
happens.’

Father Lamb sat in an old chintz chair by the door, a pink blanket over his knees, a sermon on his lap, his white beard and whiskers luminous in the sun, the first green of
spring glimmering in the elderly rose over his head. Dreadnought sat at his side. Hettie patrolled her currant bushes, picking off caterpillars for her bantams. She favoured benign neglect, in both
housekeeping and horticulture, in every respect other than the currant bushes. Dodo was in the kitchen busy with a sponge cake for the afternoon moss-collecting expedition cocoa, flour and milk to
replace chocolate.

Through the window she watched Wolfie crossing and criss-crossing the ground in front of the house. Hero followed Wolfie, and Scout followed Hero, jealous muzzle to his flank. Dodo smiled sadly
to herself. Not a day went by without Wolfie writing to Pa. She pulled a letter out of her apron. Wolfie’s letter formation was higgledy and picturesque. A small pencil drawing, meant to
illustrate the scale of Hero’s physical perfection headed the letter, beneath it Hero’s height in hands, then:

The mysterious buckets of milk had stopped coming after Wolfie wrote a message and pinned it to the stable door:
I EAT HAY NOW
. Dodo had been relieved about that
because the milk probably came from a boy whose parents had spat at them. She’d asked Hettie about Ned, and Hettie told her that Ned had had to leave school early, that he’d had to take
full-time work; his father’s leg had worsened and he was unable to work.

‘He does what he can, takes bits and pieces of work wherever he finds it. It’ll be a struggle for him to keep hold of that farm . . . He never wanted to take it on, you know, he
wanted to stay on at school, but his older brother died at Dunkirk in those first months of the war. He was always a clever boy, and kind.’ She had smiled at her. ‘Still, he’ll be
all right – he knows his way about. The peat water of this place runs in the Jervis veins – they know this moor like no one else and they take it as theirs.’

Father Lamb had said that he feared that all the promise in Ned might wither under the strain of fending for his siblings, that he knew there were problems with the rent on the land.

Dodo looked out as she sifted flour. She looked at Wolfie – at the smile on his face, the hand in his pocket fingering, probably, an apple. Hero was starting forward, nuzzling
Wolfie’s pocket, now lifting his head, swinging his tail. ‘Look at me,’ he was saying. ‘Am I not a fine horse?’

Pa wrote often from his barracks, mainly with advice for Wolfie, though sometimes there’d be bits about the progress on his case too. But still their understanding of what had happened at
Dunkirk was partial and confused. Pa had written this week that he felt like a small boy standing in a corner of the classroom being punished for something he hadn’t done. They’d smiled
at that, but Dodo felt that she too was being punished for something
she
hadn’t done, her love for Pa turning cloudy with anger and a sense of injustice. Wherever she and Wolfie went
they were watched in silence, and silence would cling like a shadow as they left; then there’d be the whispering. The Causey girls no longer taunted openly. When Dodo came into the schoolroom
they’d watch her in sinister silence, three dark witches that seemed to know something Dodo didn’t, something too terrible for words. She’d caught anxious glances between the
Lambs as though they too knew something, Dodo thought, that she didn’t. If Pa were found guilty, would he go to jail, would that be the worst that could happen? The schoolroom tauntings
angered and outraged Wolfie, but at Lilycombe he could forget. For Dodo there was no such rest, and the dark knot of fear inside her grew and spread its web.

She looked out of the window on to the purple sweep of the common. She’d first admired, now loved, the savage beauty of these hills, each day the leafy whiteness and brightness of Holland
Park receding further from her mind.

Hero whickered and was answered by a whinny from Scout. Dodo smiled. Hero stopped and stretched, allowing Scout to nibble and caress him. He took her love as no more than his due and was
sometimes domineering, sometimes loving and protective of the wise and gentle Scout. Now he tossed his head and cantered playfully away, his legs springy and dancing, improbable as a
daddy-long-legs. Scout cantered after him, the two of them dodging the flowering may trees, dodging gorse. Wolfie was watching and smiling, the bugle in his hand winking and flashing in the
sun.

Hettie joined Dodo at the window and together they looked out.

‘Scout thinks of nothing but Hero. He is a prince to her,’ said Hettie, shaking her head and smiling. After a little while, seeing Dodo so quiet, she said, ‘Scout’s
yours, Dodo, to ride, for as long as you’re here. Scout would love to be ridden and I would love you to ride her. You’ll come to no harm with her, she knows the moor better than anyone,
it’s in her blood.’

‘Oh – !’ Dodo was too moved to speak, overcome with joy and gratitude.

Hettie smiled and began to collect provisions for the afternoon’s expedition, raising her head again to look out. ‘Why not ride her out today and lead Hero behind you on a halter and
rope – what do you say?’

Dodo was dizzy at Hettie’s kindness.

‘Will you ride her? You’ll love her – she’s as surefooted and lion-hearted as any horse.’

When Wolfie came inside, horse slobber in his hair, straw clinging to his jumper, he asked, ‘Why do we have to collect moss?’

‘It’s for dressings. The Red Cross needs a million dressings a month for the wounded.’

‘A million is a lot,’ said Wolfie.

‘It grows right here, up on the moor. Sphagnum holds more than twenty-five times its weight in water, so you see, it can hold more blood than cotton can . . .’

The children were silent. Down herein the country, and especially so now that Pa was in England, the war felt far away. The distant rumbling over Bristol, Hettie’s moss and the Invasion
Committee meetings were the only reminders that the country was at war.

Later, as they left, Wolfie said proudly to Father Lamb, ‘We’re going to collect moss for the wounded. Hero is coming and Dodo’s going to ride Scout.’

‘Good for you. Sphagnum stops infection,’ said Father Lamb. ‘Did you know that? The Highlanders, after Flodden, stuffed their wounds with moss. Up here, a wounded deer will
drag himself to a sphagnum bog with his last breath because he knows it will help heal him.’

‘Bogs preserve men,’ said Wolfie unexpectedly. ‘I am learning about Bog Man at school. Ancient man used bogs to keep his butter fresh but Hero won’t like bogs because he
does not like to get his feet wet.’

‘And with good reason – water on the hills can be dangerous in these parts. Up on the Chains, the bogs can be twenty foot deep after rain.’

‘Scout will look after them,’ said Hettie. ‘Dodo will ride her there and Scout will carry the moss back in baskets.’

‘The soldiers need a million dressings a week,’ said Wolfie.

‘A million. Is that so, Hettie?’ Father Lamb looked up at his daughter. ‘A million a week?’ He took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead, ‘Do you know, H. G.
Wells says that every decision should be made in the presence of a wounded man, so that the War Cabinet is reminded what war does. I think that’s right, Hettie, I think that’s
right.’

‘When can I ride Hero?’ asked Wolfie.

‘Not yet,’ said Hettie. ‘But it’s the first step, haltering him to Scout. Today we’ll teach your proud emperor a thing or two.’

‘Prepare to mount . . .’ Dodo commanded. ‘Mount!’

The forbearing Scout waited as Wolfie scrambled up on to the saddle in front of Dodo. Hettie handed up a saddlebag, bulging with jam jar, magnifying glass, paint box, sketchpad, and lunch.

‘Destination Pennywater,’ said Dodo to Wolfie. ‘Mission Pony Patrol.’

Sun touched them that summer, alighting on their young and troubled lives, unexpected as a butterfly, and staying. After the foamy white hawthorn, the grassy slopes around
Lilycombe had grown thick with yellow buttercups. Fear for Pa receded as endless sunlit days passed in a galloping succession. Pa had written that he thought the case against him might be dropped
or forgotten since it seemed to be taking so long. There’d been nothing in the papers for a while and, for a time, the children found that out riding, with Scout, they could together forget
and be free.

Almost every day they rode together on Scout, Hero roped alongside, haughty as a captured princeling. The horses, Scout and Hero both, taught Wolfie and Dodo to love the place, to love the
summer pink and purple hills, the silver rivers that laced the dark combes like streamers. In and out of cloud shadows, they wandered like will-o’-the-wisps, Hero ahead, frolicking, defiant,
wild as a hawk, lissom as a goat, the iron-grey tail a streaming banner. Above and far away, fighter planes flashed and winked like silver blades, unheeded.