A Horse Called Hero (8 page)

‘They’re wild as birds,’ said Miss Lamb, laughing. ‘Unbroken, untamed. True wild horses.’ She laughed again as the pack plunged and wheeled away as one, tails and
manes streaming. Sure-footed as mountain goats, lissom as hawks, creatures from another, older world, they pounded over the turf, and dropped below the curve of the hill into a rough cleave.

‘There’s only fifty of them left now,’ said Miss Lamb. ‘Only fifty on the whole moor.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Some say they’re being poached,
perhaps being taken for food.’

Dodo looked at her in horror.
For food?

They walked on in silence towards a long, low whitewashed house. A dishevelled, elderly rose draped itself comfortably over the porch, beneath which sat a huge dog, grey and tall. Miss Lamb
whistled – a good masculine whistle. Wolfie turned in admiration. The dog paid no attention, but a sturdy biscuit-coloured mare trotted up, tossing her head, whinnying.

‘Scout doesn’t think much of the ponies. She’s rather above them and grazes only on the old tennis court.’ Miss Lamb dug a carrot out of her cape. Scout nuzzled her
shoulder, then lowered her whiskery head to the carrot.

‘Do you ride her?’ asked Wolfie hopefully.

Miss Lamb shook her head. ‘I grew out of her a while ago,’ she said. ‘But Lilycombe will always be her home. She’s a kind and compassionate lady, is old Scout, a brood
mare through and through.’ She placed a hand on the dog’s head. ‘Hello, Dreadnought,’ she said.

The dog looked straight ahead, unblinking, upright and dignified as Father Lamb’s church tower. As though it were the most natural thing in the world, Scout was unlatching the front door
with her nose. Wolfie gawped. Scout entered, negotiating, head lowered, the single stone step with care. Miss Lamb followed. Dodo and Wolfie hesitated on the porch, holding their suitcases.

‘Can we live here?’ whispered Wolfie, open-mouthed, to Dodo.

Dodo glimpsed a hall. Piles of books stood floor to ceiling, canvases stacked one against another.

‘She went in – Scout – the horse . . .’ began Wolfie, wide-eyed.

‘Oh yes – she used to hunt, you see,’ said Miss Lamb, emerging with a small basket, ‘and the hunt like to take the short cuts through the house, rather than going round
it, so she thinks it’s normal and of course she discovered the larder once on the way through so now—’

‘Can we live here, Miss Lamb?’ asked Wolfie.

‘I very much hope you will, and when we’re here, call me Hettie. Now, leave your cases there. Egg, did you say? Honey? And will evaporated milk suit your charger, do you
think?’

Father Lamb sat by the fire, his dog at his side. Dreadnought was a hound of such dignity as to betray interest in nothing other than his master, not even in the young horse
that stood near the sink. Father Lamb, however, glanced, over half-moon glasses, from Wolfie, lining up jars of honey on the draining board, to Hero. He looked the foal over, from head to tail.

‘You’ll make a milksop of him,’ he said. ‘He’ll
not
grow up to be a horse. If he consumes more fresh dairy in a morning than Kensington sees in a month,
he’ll never be a horse, especially if he grows up in a kitchen . . .’

Wolfie beamed. ‘Look, Father Lamb, he’s losing his baby fur. His hoofs are hard and he’s too heavy to carry now.’

Father Lamb’s eyes were still on Hero as the foal explored the surface of the table with his muzzle, then the door to the larder. ‘Most of England hasn’t seen a fresh egg since
’39, yet your charger takes a breakfast egg
daily
.’

‘Not tomorrow,’ said Wolfie. ‘No more eggs. Four weeks old.’ He beamed again and moved the honey to the sideboard. Hero’s head turned, monitoring the process of the
honey. Hettie left what she was busy with at the Primus stove and went to light the copper in the washhouse for the hip-bath. Dodo watched her carefully, concern in her expressive eyes.

‘Bed time,’ said Hettie, ‘for the three of you. The Invasion Committee’ll arrive soon and perhaps we can persuade Hero to make way for everyone.’ She tightened the
blackout curtains over the sink, lit her father’s lamp and adjusted the light-guard over it. Dodo put down her sketchpad.

The door to the yard opened and Samuel, the first member of the Committee, appeared, running and breathless. Samuel was always in and out of Lilycombe, doing odd bits and pieces on the land.

‘Lower your lights. Bombs on this side,’ he urged. ‘Listen, anti-aircraft guns – Jerry’s close tonight – over the Channel somewhere.’

‘Up to bed,’ said Miss Lamb. ‘I’d like Hero in the boot room now, please, Wolfgang.’ Wolfie walked as slowly as he could towards the back door, Hero following, like
a dog. Dodo tidied Wolfie’s sticky plate and spoon and dragged him from the boot room where Hero was currently stabled. They went upstairs as the back door opened and more men arrived.

‘The water’ll be ready now,’ called Hettie.

‘I don’t want a bath.’ Wolfie was predictable about baths. ‘Shall we tell Pa we don’t want to come to London?’ he asked, adjusting Captain on his bedside
table so that his head faced Wolfie’s pillow. ‘That
he
must come
here
?’

Dodo was silent, then she said, ‘Wolfie, it might be a long time till Pa can see us.’

She’d sent a card to Pa’s barracks, another one to Spud, telling them both of their new address and of how much happier they were. Wolfie too had sent Pa a card giving Hero’s
height in hands and his current dietary requirements. He’d left a note, too, on the barn door at Windwistle saying ‘GONE TO LILYCOMBE’. Dodo wondered about the milk – about
its arrival at Lilycombe every morning – she wondered if it were brought by Ned Jervis, and if his mother Mary Jervis knew. She wondered too whether Pa had written to the Lambs: they seemed
to know a lot about Pa now.

A while later, half thinking about Pa, half listening to the rattle of anti-aircraft guns and unable to sleep, Dodo crept to the window. From the first-floor windows at Lilycombe you could see
the Bristol Channel and sometimes all the way to Wales. There was a red glow, far away, at the mouth of the Channel. Above it, searchlights scraped the dark. Bombs were falling somewhere.

No one talked to her at school now. Chrissie Causey no longer sat next to her. Dodo minded it all a little less since moving to Lilycombe, though she would never go into a shop again unless she
was with Miss Lamb. Did Pa guess that people would be cruel to them? she wondered. Did he know that Spud had forced them out of Addison Avenue, did he suspect that their leaving Hollowcombe had
anything to do with him?

She watched the searchlights, crossing and crisscrossing, and hypnotic. The droning had grown in volume, the planes must be close. Suddenly there were bombs falling nearby, the floors of the
house rattling as in an earthquake. Wolfie was calling to her, reaching out to the bedside table for Captain. She took his hand and they crept halfway down the stairs, shivering, and sat listening
to the voices beyond the door, thinking of the fire in there, of the comfort of being in there.

‘That’s over two hundred incendiaries,’ Father Lamb was saying. ‘Close.’

Dodo and Wolfie shifted down another step towards the door. ‘Who has the Minute Book? Good. Note. Twenty shovels,’ Samuel was saying. ‘Twenty spades. Ten pickaxes. Ten
wheelbarrows.’

‘How many horses?’ said Father Lamb.

The roar of the planes was dimming.

‘Thirty.’ Samuel’s voice.

There was a pause, as the figure was noted down, then Father Lamb spoke again. ‘How many carts in the village?’

‘Five.’

‘Five carts. Good. Next item.’

‘Plans for burial of the dead?’ someone asked.

Wolfie wriggled under Dodo’s arm like a puppy. As he did so, the small lead horse fell from his lap. It tumbled from step to step, clanked against the door at the bottom and came to
rest.

A chair scraped, the door opened and the children were revealed in a pool of yellow light. Father Lamb paused, then stooped to pick up Captain. Tenderly he turned the figure over in his hands,
pulled the door to a little way, then climbed the stairs and sat beside them. Studying Captain thoughtfully, he was silent for a few minutes. Then he looked up and said, ‘Your father’s
as brave a man as ever walked this earth. It takes all kinds of courage, you see, to lead a good life. It takes great courage to lead a cavalry charge into firing guns but it takes courage, too, to
go against what other men do and say and think. It’s always easier to do what everyone else does. But it’s this second kind of bravery, the not thinking what others think, that it takes
to lead a good life.’

Wolfie didn’t really see at all but he liked being talked to as if he weren’t a child and he loved to hear talk of Pa. Father Lamb led them upstairs. At their door, once Wolfie was
in bed, Father Lamb placed a hand on Dodo’s head.

‘Will you help guard Hettie’s herd? Two more were gone this morning, taken for God knows what . . . It’s taken twenty years to breed that herd and it’d break her heart if
. . .’

Dodo nodded.

‘God bless you,’ he said. They listened to his tread on the stairs as he returned to his Invasion Committee.

Wolfie tugged at the string on the parcel. He scrabbled through layers of brown paper. A letter fell out. He handed it to Dodo and continued unwrapping.

Dodo read:

Wolfie, tearing through sheets of newspaper, unearthed a bugle, shiny as the day it was made. He took it, put it to his lips and blew.

‘Of course he has a dark muzzle,’ said Wolfie indignantly, his mouth to the bugle. ‘Dodo, you must paint him for Pa, you must do his portrait so he can
see.’

Father Lamb always made breakfast. In his dressing gown, he’d prepare Camp coffee and stand with a steaming bowl of it at the window that looked down towards the
churchyard. He turned and took Wolfie’s bugle down from the lintel and blew it to announce that breakfast was ready, then turned back to the window and his coffee.

Wolfie rushed downstairs and raced across the kitchen to the yard window, whistling to Hero. The sun shone out of a cobalt sky but the ground was stiff with frost. A fringe of glistening icicles
hung like dinosaur teeth from the stable roof. Hero was now tall enough to reach his neck over the stable door, and would always be there, watching the kitchen door, waiting for Wolfie. Hero now
shared the same winter quarters as Scout, though they were separated by a stall. Scout would rest her whiskery head on the wooden bar, following Hero’s every movement with her gentle amber
eyes. She never looked out into the yard, her eyes were always on Hero. Wolfie didn’t approve of Hero being in a stable. He said that Hero missed the prancing and the chasing he could do
outside. Wolfie turned from the window and went to the larder, saying, ‘Hero will have apples today and celery and a carrot. That’s his Christmas treat. But he does not like to be in a
box. He is restless in a box.’

Thoughts of Hero always came with thoughts of Pa: Hero would have carrots and apples and celery for Christmas, but what would Pa have? Wolfie left the larder and joined Father Lamb at what they
called the church window.

‘You see, Wolfie –’ Father Lamb gestured down to the churchyard where you could pick out, through mist that still clung to the hollows, the white sheep and the gravestones
– ‘there’ll not be far for me to go when the time comes, only Hettie’s redcurrants between me and the grave.’ Father Lamb smiled. ‘Beneath that rowan there, all
red and silver, is where I’ll lie . . . The rowan, you see, is not only the tree of the moor, but also the tree that stands sentinel at heaven’s gate.’

It took Wolfie a minute or so to digest the thought of Father Lamb lying beyond the redcurrants, below the sheep and the rowan. He looked at Father Lamb’s rosy cheeks and white beard and
decided that he was not entirely serious. Eventually he took Father Lamb’s hand and asked, ‘What do you do if you are in your barracks on Christmas day?’

‘We’ve not heard from your pa for a while, have we? We’ll pray for him today.’ He put an arm around the boy’s shoulder, rumpling Wolfie’s thick hair.
‘Will you ever be tidy, you tatterdemalion child?’

Wolfie looked up at him, bewildered.

‘Must you always look as though you’ve slept the night in a manger, with the ass and oxen?’

‘I will . . .’ began Wolfie, patting ineffectually at his hair.

‘Come the Resurrection,’ said Father Lamb with a smile.

The door opened and Samuel entered. There was no day of rest for Samuel.

‘They’ve gone, sir, two more gone. They were down in the cleave and they’ve gone – young ones – two fillies.’

Father Lamb buried his face in his hands. After a minute he looked up and said, shaking, ‘Well, Wolfie, we’ll not tell Hettie today I think, nor Dodo.’ To Samuel he said,
‘Who’s taking them? They’re obstinate as camels – who is it do you think? It’s surely a local?’