The War That Saved My Life

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

  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 h
ouse.

  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.”

  “I thought I was allowed to go outside,” I said. My foot hurt, worse than it had for days. I hadn’t walked so far without my crutches since I’d first come here. I had a scratch down my arm too, that had left a thin trail of blood.

  “You can’t leave without telling me,” Miss Smith said. She looked less angry, but still unpredictable. “You’ve got to let me know where you go.”

  How could I have done that? “I had to help Maggie,” I said. I told her about the horse, how the plane spooked it, how Maggie fell.

  Miss Smith snorted. “Maggie? Who’s Maggie?”

  I tried to explain. I told about the big horse, and the house and stables.

  “The Honorable Margaret Thorton?” Miss Smith asked, her eyes widening. “Lady Thorton’s daughter?”

  I shrugged. “I suppose. She’s got a brother called Jonathan.”

  “The girl we met with Lady Thorton, last week in the market?”

  I nodded.

  Miss Smith sat down in the other chair. “The whole story,” she demanded.

  I told the whole story, except for the part where Maggie said bad words. Miss Smith straightened up. Her face looked grim. “So,” she said. “You rode Jonathan Thorton’s prize hunter double with Miss Margaret, back to her home?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I don’t believe you,” Miss Smith said.

  I didn’t know what to say. I told lies, of course I did. But I wouldn’t lie about this. I’d been helpful. I’d done a good job, getting Maggie and the horse home. Grimes had said so. He’d tipped his cap to me, when I got out of the car.

  “I wouldn’t know where she lived,” I said, “if it wasn’t true.”

  “Oh, I believe you saw the house,” Miss Smith said bitterly. “I believe Miss Margaret rode by, and you saw them and followed them. Look at the state you’re in—foot bleeding again and everything. I believe you saw Margaret, the horse, and the house. I just don’t believe any of the rest of it.”

  My mouth opened, then shut. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Go to your room,” Miss Smith said. “Wash yourself off in the bathroom, then go to your room and stay there. I don’t want to see you again today. I’ll send Jamie up with some supper once he’s home.”

  Hours later Jamie came up with a plate for me. “How was school?” I asked.

  “I hate it,” he said, his eyes dark. “I’m never going back.”

  Later still Miss Smith came up with her horrible book. She sat down on the chair on Jamie’s side of the bed, and she opened the book without looking at me. I ignored her too. Jamie snugged himself into the blankets. “What happens next?” he asked, as though the book was something he cared about.

  “You’ll see,” Miss Smith said, smiling at him. She opened the book and started to read.

  Next morning at breakfast Jamie said again he wasn’t going back to school. “Of course you are,” Miss Smith said. “You want to learn to read. Then you can read Swiss Family Robinson all by yourself.”

  Jamie looked up at her through his eyelashes. “I’d rather you read it to me,” he said sweetly. Miss Smith smiled at him, and the thought ran through me that I hated them both.

  Out in the field that afternoon, I couldn’t make Butter go faster than a walk. I tried and tried. I kicked and squeezed with my legs. I even snapped a branch off a tree and smacked Butter’s side with it. He lurched forward for a few stumbling steps, but dropped back almost immediately to his usual shuffle. It wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t elegant like Jonathan’s horse, but I was sure he could do better if he tried.

  Miss Smith opened the back door. “Ada,” she called, “come here, please.”

  Right. I pretended I hadn’t heard, and turned Butter so our backsides faced her.

  “Ada,” she called again, “you’ve got a visitor.”

  Maggie? Grimes? Mam? I slid off Butter, pulled the bridle off his head—I wasn’t going to get chewed out for leaving it on him again—hobbled to my crutches leaning against the wall, and went into the house as quickly as I could.

  The visitor was Lady Thorton. She was smiling. Her face looked different when she smiled.

  “She’s come to thank you,” Miss Smith said, in an oddly stiff voice.

  I stood in the doorway, staring at them, hiding my right foot behind my left. To break the silence I sai
d, “How is she? Maggie, I mean.”

  Lady Thorton—Maggie’s mum—patted the empty spot on the sofa beside her. I sat down on it, folded my hands, and slid my right foot behind my left.

  “She’s much better today, thank you,” Lady Thorton said. “She woke with a headache, but she knows where and who she is.”

  “She seemed all right when she first came off,” I said. “She got worse as we went on.”

  Lady Thorton nodded. “Head injuries can be like that. She tells me she doesn’t remember much of what happened. She remembers you were there, but that’s about all. Grimes in the stable told me how you brought her home.”

  I glanced at Miss Smith. Her face still looked stiff, like it was made from cardboard. I said, nodding toward her, “She didn’t believe me, that I rode that horse an’ all.”

  Lady Thorton opened a box near her feet. “I might not have believed it myself without a witness. That’s not an easy horse.”

  “He likes me.” It slipped out before I thought, but I realized it was true. Jonathan’s horse did like me.

  Now Lady Thorton’s face looked strained. “Then you’re the third person that animal has ever actually liked, after Grimes and my son.” She shook her head, once, sharply, and her face took on its official look. The iron-face look. “I brought over some clothing for you and your brother. Your brother’s is from an assortment of village families. Yours is mostly from my daughter. Things she’s outgrown. Here.”

  She laid a pair of yellow pants and a pair of ankle boots across my lap. I stared at them. The pants were made of a thick, tough fabric, with legs that ballooned wide at the top, then narrowed and buttoned below the knee. I recognized them: Maggie had worn a pair just like them the day before. “For riding,” I said. I’d never worn pants before. It would be easier, on Butter.

  Lady Thorton nodded. “Yes. I’m sure Miss Smith’s helping you, but I didn’t think she’d be able to find you the proper clothes.”