The War that Saved My Life (11 page)

It happened like this. I was walking Butter in circles, practicing making him turn. I heard a sound like hoof beats coming from the road, and I stopped to look, but couldn’t yet see anything through the trees. A plane took off from the airfield and screamed straight over our heads just as a horse and rider came into view. Butter didn’t mind the plane—he saw dozens of planes take off every day now—but the other horse, a big brown one, wheeled in fright. His rider pulled the reins sharply to keep him from bolting, but he wheeled again, and then jumped forward, off the road and onto the verge, nearly chesting the stone wall into our field. The rider bounced loose in the saddle, and the horse, frantic, made a sudden leap up and over the wall. The rider tumbled sideways and disappeared.

The strange horse galloped straight for Butter, reins flying, loose stirrups walloping his sides. Butter spooked and spun, tossing me, and together both horses ran to the far side of the field. They galloped about for a bit, the idiots, but I wasn’t paying attention to them. I ran for the fallen rider as fast as my bad foot would let me. I’d recognized her: the little iron-faced girl. The one who’d called me out.

She lay facedown in the muddy weeds on the verge. I scrambled over the wall just as she, blinking, rolled herself over. She opened her eyes and let out a string of curses that would have been at home in my lane, let alone the dockyards. She ended with, “I hate that stupid bloody horse.”

Bloody
is not something Miss Smith let Jamie or me say. It was a swear word, a bad one.

“I hate him,” she repeated, looking at me.

“Are you much hurt?”

She started to sit up, then fell back, nodding. “Dizzy,” she said. “And my shoulder hurts something awful. Bet I broke my collarbone.” She touched a place below her neck, and winced. “My mother broke hers last year, hunting. Easy to do. Where’s the wretched horse?”

I looked over the wall. “Grazing next to the pony. Acts like nothing’s wrong.”

She pulled herself slowly to a sitting position. “He would. I hate him. He belongs to my brother.” She started to stand, gave a small cry, and sat back down with a thump. Her skin went pale, then an interesting shade of gray.

“Better stay still,” I told her. I went to fetch the horse. His front foot was tangled in the reins, but otherwise he seemed fine, and he stood politely while I untangled him. He was bigger than Butter, and far more handsome—beautiful shiny coat, long elegant legs. He sniffed my hands the way Butter often did. “No treats,” I told him.

I started to walk him back to the girl, but honestly, my foot hurt, and also the horse was so pretty. I pulled the reins over his head, put my good foot into the left stirrup, and hauled myself aboard.

The saddle felt snug and comfortable after the loose sliding expanse of Butter’s bare back. I couldn’t put my bad foot into a stirrup, but I liked the feel of the stirrup on my good foot. I gathered the reins up, and the horse delicately arched his neck.

I thumped him with my heels, and he nearly bolted. My mistake. Clearly the horse responded to much softer signals than Butter. I pulled him back, and used my legs very gently. He walked forward, a fine, long-striding, loopy sort of walk.

Now the girl was standing, hanging on to the wall. She called, “Take him around by the gate.”

I had a better idea. The horse had jumped in; it could jump out. I kicked him forward. He took a few enormously bouncy strides, then settled into a nice smooth run.
Oh,
I thought, my breath catching in my throat.
This was what it felt like to move fast without pain.
I pulled on the reins and aimed the horse straight for the wall. He never hesitated—up and over in one smooth bound.
Flying.
I held on to his mane with both hands and flew with him. We landed together on the other side. I laughed out loud.

“Show-off,” the girl said, but she was laughing too. “Lucky you there isn’t another airplane.”

“Lucky me,” I said. “Can you ride him now?”

She moved her right arm experimentally, and winced. “I’ll never be able to hold him,” she said. “Not one-handed. And my head hurts terribly. Can I get up behind you?”

I scooched forward. The saddle was plenty big. I took my foot out of the stirrup and helped pull her onto the horse. “You can have the foot things,” I said.

She put her good arm around my waist. “They’re called stirrups,” she said, slipping her feet into them. “Just go back the way I came from. And walk, please. My head feels like it’s smashed in two. A trot would be the end of me.”

Her name was Margaret. Her mother was the head of the Women’s Volunteer Service, which was why she was in charge of the evacuees. “But that’s not all,” Margaret said. “She does war work all the time. She’s trying to stay busy so she doesn’t have time to worry about Jonathan. She wants to win the war herself before he’s part of the fighting.” Jonathan, Margaret’s brother, was learning to fly planes at a different airfield, far from here. He’d left Oxford to do it, Margaret said.

“You talk like our evacuees,” she said. “The same funny accent.”

I said, “You talk funny to me.”

She laughed. “I guess. But you can ride, and our evacuees, the ones staying with us, I mean, are all terrified of horses. Where’d you learn to ride in London?”

“Didn’t. Just teaching myself here.”

“Well, you’re pretty good.”

“On a posh horse like this one, anyone would be,” I said. “Our pony has me off half a dozen times a day.”

“Ponies are snakes,” she replied. “Sneaky devils. You should see what mine gets up to.”

It turned out the horse we were riding was her brother’s hunter, and her mother was making her keep it exercised. “Just until I leave for school,” she said. “Which should have been last week, only they’re moving the school, evacuating it, I suppose, so we’re starting late. And I hate this horse, I do, and he hates me. Goes like a lamb for anybody else. Mum won’t believe me, and he’s worse when he’s by himself, and he won’t pony with my mare, so I’m stuck fighting him alone for an hour a day. All the stable lads have run off to join up and Grimes is overworked and there’s nobody to go with me.”

All this talk—which I only half understood—seemed to suddenly exhaust her. She sagged against my shoulder. “You’re all right?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said. “I feel sick.”

The horse swung authoritatively around a corner. I hoped he knew where he was going. He seemed to, and anyway, Margaret wasn’t telling me anything different.

She swayed suddenly. I wished I was behind her, so I could hold her steady. “Maggie?” I said. There was a Margaret on our lane and everyone called her Maggie. “Maggie, hang on.”

I pulled her hand farther around my waist. She leaned her head between my shoulder blades, muttering to herself. I worked hard to keep the horse steady but walking fast. I didn’t know how far we had to go.

“M’mother likes Jonathan better than me,” Maggie said, more loudly. “She doesn’t really like girls. She’ll do anything for him, but she’s always cross with me.”

“My mam likes my brother better too,” I said. “She hates me, because of my foot.”

I could feel her lean over to look at my bad foot. I was glad that it was bandaged. She swayed, off balance. “Careful,” I said.

“Mmm,” she said.

“A brewer’s cart ran over it,” I said.

“Oh,” Maggie said. “Well, that’s a silly reason to hate you.”

The horse clomped on. Maggie’s head bounced against my shoulder. “It wasn’t a brewer’s cart,” I said, after a pause. “It’s a clubfoot.” That word the doctor had used.

“Oh, clubfoot.” Her voice slurred. “I’ve heard of that. We had a foal born with a clubfoot.”

The horse turned again, down a long gravel drive planted on both sides with straight rows of trees. He stepped faster now, swinging his head. Maggie groaned. “I’m going to be sick,” she said.

“Not on the horse,” I said.

“Mmm,” she said, and was, but she leaned over far enough that most of the sick missed the saddle. Then she nearly fell off. I grabbed her. The horse swung his head impatiently.

“He’s always happier going home,” Maggie murmured. “Rotten bugger.”

“What’s a foal?” I asked.

“What? Oh—a baby horse. We had a horse born with a clubfoot. That’s what Grimes called it.” She swayed again. “I feel awful.”

I tried to imagine a little horse with a twisted hoof. Butter’s hooves were long and curling, but they didn’t twist. What would a horse do if it couldn’t walk? No crutches for horses. Were there?

“Did it die, then?” I asked.

“What? Oh, the horse. The clubfoot horse. No. Grimes fixed it. Grimes and the farrier.”

The trees opened up and in front of us was a huge stone building, big like I imagined the dock warehouses must be. Big like the London train station. It couldn’t be right. Whatever the place was, it wasn’t a house.

The horse shook his head at my attempts to rein him in. Instead of heading straight for the massive building, he went around to the side, to what even I could recognize was a stable.

An elderly man came forward at a sort of running limp. Grimes, I thought. “What’s happened?” he asked.

“Our Maggie’s hurt,” I told him. She tumbled sideways into his arms. He staggered, but held on to her. “She fell off an’ smacked her head,” I said. “Hurt her shoulder too.”

Grimes nodded. “Can you stay with the horse a moment? I’ll get her to the house.”

“Of course,” I said, trying make my voice sound like Maggie’s.
Grimes fixed a horse with a clubfoot. Fixed a clubfoot. How?

He carried Maggie away. I slid off the horse—a very long way to the ground—and looked around. There were stalls just like the closed-up ones at Miss Smith’s house, only more of them, and fancier, and mostly occupied. Horses looked over the open tops of the stalls’ half-doors, their ears pricked with interest. Some of them made little murmuring sounds.

I led Maggie’s brother’s horse into an empty stall. The horse thrust his head into a water bucket and then into a pile of hay. I got the saddle off him—not hard, just buckles under the flap bits—and slung it over the door, then got the bridle off. I shut the horse in the stall and carried the tack and bridle to their storeroom, which I found without any trouble. One row of racks held saddles, and another bridles, and I put the kit I held into the empty spaces. I wandered around looking at the other horses until Grimes returned.

“Thank you,” he said. “She’s in bed now, and m’lady has phoned for the doctor. Don’t think there’s anything more we can do. She doesn’t know where she is right now. You get that sometimes, with a smack on the head.”

“She seemed all right at first,” I said. “She got worse as we were going.”

“I’m not surprised.” He pointed to my foot. “What happened? You get hurt too?”

I looked down. A small bloodstain was seeping through the bandage. “Oh,” I said. “It does that, sometimes. When I don’t have my crutches.” I hesitated, then added, “It’s a clubfoot.”

Grimes didn’t offer to fix it. He nodded and said, “I’ll give you a ride home in the car, then.”

Grimes took me home very nicely. He thanked me for helping “Miss Margaret.” I told him I was glad to, especially since it meant I got to ride such a big fancy horse. He laughed a bit at that, and patted my hand, which was odd but okay with me. I felt completely happy as I went through the front door. I was totally unprepared for Miss Smith’s rage.

She came at me like a small yellow-haired witch, eyes blazing. “Where have you BEEN?” she shouted. “I’ve nearly gone to the police. Pony’s in the field with a bridle on, you’re nowhere.
It’s almost four o’clock.
What on earth were you thinking?”

She came toward me. I ducked, my arms around my head. “I’m not going to hit you!” she roared. “Though I feel like it. You half deserve a whipping, making me worry like that.”

Worry? Worry the way I worried over Jamie, in London? I dropped my hands to my lap—I’d sat down in one of the purple chairs—and stared at her, perplexed.

“I know you don’t like strangers,” she said, more quietly. “I couldn’t imagine a reason you’d go into town. I didn’t think you’d go to the airfield, but I went there to ask anyway, and they hadn’t seen you. Here it’s the first time I left you alone—I couldn’t imagine what could go wrong. I didn’t have any idea where you could be.”