A Horse Called Hero (6 page)

‘
Scratch, Wolfie, scratch their necks. That’s what they do to each other. They don’t like pats
,’ Pa had said when he’d taken them to the stables of his
barracks.

Wolfie ran his hand down a forearm, around the large bone of the knee, closing his hand, wonderingly, in a ring around the long cannon bone of a leg. He measured the length of his own arm
against Hero’s foreleg, then felt the surprising softness of a young hoof.

Then he scooped out a finger of honey and swirled it into the jar of water Dodo had prepared. He extended his hand and Hero’s head turned, breathing heavily, nostrils flaring. Wolfie
inched his palm closer and waited. Hero drew his head closer, nostrils wide and rosy pink. Wolfie’s hand was still, his eyes watching as the velvet ears flickered.

Hero’s head drew closer still, the dark almond eye watching, then closer still, and Wolfie felt the soft muzzle on his palm, felt the lips open and snuffle, snuffle again, finding the
honey, then snorting and slurping. Wolfie poured more honey mixture and held out his palm, watching Hero as Hero watched him. Straightaway Hero snuffled and snorted again at his palm.

When there was no more water, Wolfie took a torch from the basket and poked around the walls of the building. Finally he found a feed scoop in a bucket by the door. He broke the egg on to it,
then some condensed milk. Hero lifted his head, suspicious and wary, then inched it round slowly, nostrils twitching, and suddenly slurping at the strange new food, then snuffling and blowing and
slurping and then nuzzling Wolfie for more, almost knocking the condensed milk can from his hand as he upended it over the scoop. Again Hero wet his snout and blew and slurped and sloshed, and
Wolfie laughed with the sweetness of it.

Hero was tiring. Like a baby, Wolfie thought, seeing the eyelids droop, the long straight lashes dark against the pale furry coat. Wolfie placed his hand on Hero’s narrow forehead. His
lips were twitching. Dreaming of milk and honey, Wolfie thought to himself. His hand followed the crest of Hero’s neck, down to the withers. He felt the muscles relax and soften under his
stroking. He ran his hand down the shoulder, along the rib, and felt there, beneath his hand, the pulse of a heart beating.

He drew the blanket slowly over Hero, then lay down, there, beside his horse, in the quiet of night, in the prickle and smell of straw, the dark stable as peaceful as the calm of a church, the
silence full as a prayer.

The cuffs of his pyjamas sticky and sweet with milk, Wolfie grew warm and drowsy, edging closer to Hero. He laid his head on the straw, and watched Hero’s ears flicker and then,
eventually, still, the eyelids half close. He grew conscious in the stillness of the beating of his own heart, and the ribcage beside him that rose and fell, rose and fell. Over the barn door hung
a night more starry than he’d ever known.

When Dodo woke, it was too late. She yanked her shoes on and raced down the stairs. She’d wanted to get to Windwistle, to drag Wolfie back before Mrs Sprig woke but
she’d fallen into a deep sleep just before dawn.

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.

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:

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

Dodo read on to herself, almost whispering.

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

‘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.’

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, round-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
.’

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.