A Horse Called Hero

by Sam Angus

  ‘The Colonel says . . .’

  ‘Are you sure . . . ?’

  ‘You’ve got to face it . . . wouldn’t dare show his face even if . . .’

  When Spud spoke again, her voice was unusually meek. ‘I’ll make the arrangements tomorrow . . .’

  Dodo clenched Wolfie’s hand.

  The wireless was turned up for the 9 p.m. bulletin and they heard the reassuring growl of the Prime Minister, heard him say that Britain would ‘fight on, if necessary for years, if necessary alone’.

  Suddenly an air-raid siren sounded, abrupt and chilling. Dodo leaped up and pushed the door open. They burst in and threw themselves into Spud and Dora’s ungainly heap under the kitchen table.

  There was a roaring, another roaring, then a menacing screech, a second screech and a third, all at the same time – the air was bursting with roaring and screeching until Wolfie’s teeth were rattling, his limbs shaking. He squeezed himself against Dodo. The shriek grew louder and louder like an approaching train. He felt Spud’s shivering, the bulk of her wobbling like a jelly, the fabric of her skirt shivering like a sail against his bare feet. He scrunched his eyes tight, clenched his legs to his chest but couldn’t stop the image of a train rushing directly at him, straight at his head, couldn’t stop the bomb that was coming straight at his stomach. One hand gripped a chair leg, the other a fistful of Dodo’s flannel nightdress.

  After what seemed a long while, the bomb fell far away, in a distant plop.

  The single continuous note of the All Clear sounded. Spud recovered herself and began to disentangle her lower quarters from the table legs.

  ‘Clapham,’ she said with satisfaction, then began to chide the children for not being in bed.

  ‘That was the sound of human beings trying to kill other human beings,’ whispered Dodo almost silently. She had a good memory for words and that was something Pa had once said.

  Dora was buttoning her coat. From the doorway she gave Spud a significant look.

  ‘I told you, safer out of London . . .’

  Dodo turned to Spud, mouth half open, but Spud intercepted her.

  ‘Bed,’ she said abruptly.

  Next morning, Spud steamed to and fro and up and downstairs with clothes and coats. When she paused for tea, she picked up two leaflets that had slipped through the letter box on to the mat.

  If the Invader comes, Spud read, the order is Stay Put. Do not believe rumours. Keep watch. Do not give the Germans anything. She put it down in disgust. Dodo sat silently at the window looking out. Spud picked up the second pamphlet and read: Parents warned: Bomb Risk Near. Keep off the streets as much as possible.

  This gave Spud greater satisfaction, which she denoted with a large harrumph. Loaded with fresh ballast, she picked up a basket and steered towards the laundry room.

  ‘I’ve no choice,’ she said, her back turned. ‘Even your school’s been closed.’

  She emerged, tank-like, with a basket of freshly ironed laundry. Wolfie pursued her into the nursery, where she was berthing, with the basket.

  ‘But we can’t’, he said furiously, ‘not till Pa comes home.’

  ‘You’ll be needing sensible clothes.’

  ‘We’re not going.’

  ‘I’ll take you on a special outing this afternoon.’

  ‘I don’t want to go on a special outing,’ replied Wolfie.

  Spud heaved a suitcase down from the top of a cupboard, and said, puffing, ‘We’ll go to the Army and Navy stores.’

  ‘I don’t want—’

  ‘We’ll go to Harrods.’

  Spud went back into the dining room. ‘Dorothy, it’s all arranged. You and Wolfie are to leave tomorrow.’

  Dodo, still at the window, bent her head.

  ‘But will I be with Dodo?’ said Wolfie.

  ‘You’ll be together, they’ve said you won’t be split up . . . it’s ever so nice in the countryside.’

  Wolfie was struck by a sudden thought. ‘Will there be horses?’

  ‘There are any number of horses, Wolfgang, in the countryside. You’ll be going somewhere in the South West, you might even be somewhere close to where your ma used to holiday – those landscapes she painted.’ Spud gestured to the picture on the wall but Wolfie wasn’t listening.

  ‘There’ll be horses,’ he told Dodo.

  Dodo rose and drew close to Spud. ‘Will there be another letter? . . . Will they . . . ?’

  ‘I don’t know anything – nothing more than you do.’

  ‘But what does that mean? . . . Where is he?’ whispered Dodo, her cheeks streaming.

  ‘I can’t tell you any more than what you know already,’ Spud snapped.

  It was a joyless excursion, Spud brusque and impatient, the toys in Harrods a dismal sight, the toy department empty of children. They surveyed a model trench scene of troops lined up for action in front of the Maginot Line.

  ‘Why do we have to be on an outing?’ asked Wolfie.

  ‘Even the German soldiers sell well,’ an unconvincing sales assistant was saying. Dodo turned away, but the assistant pursued her, holding out a uniformed doll.

  Much later, holding hands, they groped along the pavement between shadowy figures. Motors with masked sidelights and blackened reflectors moved slowly along Knightsbridge. The headlamps of buses were cowled crescents of dim blue. Someone somewhere was intoning through a loud speaker, ‘Thou shalt not kill. Join the Pacifists.’

  A paper was thrust into Spud’s hand.

  ‘“Thou shalt not kill” is a commandment,’ said Wolfie.

  ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you . . .’

  ‘Disgusting, you Methodists and pacifists and what have you,’ said Spud, jabbing her umbrella emphatically into the darkness. She never cared whether anyone listened to her and she was prone to underlining her opinions with an umbrella. Loudly berating pacifists and Methodists, Spud commandeered a taxicab, requesting ‘Holland Park’ in a tone so emphatic as to imply disgust with Knightsbridge.

  ‘Is God a passy-fist?’ asked Wolfie, climbing in.

  The cab glided over the bridge, the Serpentine beneath glittering like a stage.

  ‘Twenty miles per hour regulation speed,’ said the jovial driver, ‘but what good’s that if the dashboard lights are off and you can’t see the speedometer?’

  ‘How do you black out the river?’ asked Wolfie, more thrilled by the glamour of a city lit by moonlight than the toy department at Harrods. Beside him, Dodo, looking out over the shining water, cried silently.

  Chapter Three

  ‘But why do I have to wear these trousers?’ Wolfie grumbled as Spud hustled him into some prickly tweed, fussed over his buttons and collapsing socks. She plaited Dodo’s hair, and tied ribbons, which were surely not necessary for a train journey.

  At breakfast she clattered round the breakfast table, setting down egg cups with a flourish.

  ‘Have we got egg? Real egg?’ Wolfie asked, amazed.

  Spud sniffed triumphantly.

  ‘Can I have soldiers?’ asked Wolfie.

  Spud shelled Wolfie’s egg, spread it on to buttered toast and sliced it into soldiers. Wolfie beamed at the golden egg that wasn’t powdered, at the butter, at Spud’s tidy squadron on the china plate.

  ‘There are horses,’ he told Dodo for the third time that morning, ‘in the countryside.’ He put the last soldier in his mouth, and added, ‘Pa likes boiled eggs too.’

  Dodo bent her head, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks. Wolfie went to the dresser for the shortbread tin and deliberately picked just one figure. Spud unpinned the map, rolled it and put it in Wolfie’s bag.

  ‘Keep still, Wolfgang,’ she commanded, ready with a brown label and a pin. When her back was turned, Dodo rose silently, went to the mantel, picked up Pa’s photograph and slipped it into her bag.

  They travelled to Paddington by taxicab.

  ‘Can’t get closer’n this,’ grumbled the driver, peering down the crowded street. He pulled up on
Praed Street. ‘You’ll ’ave to walk from here.’

  Wolfie was gawping at a long crocodile of children of all sizes, all with regulation brown rucksacks, with gas masks in cardboard boxes round their necks and brown paper ration bags in their hands.

  ‘You see?’ said Spud, disembarking. ‘Everyone’s going. Not just you.’ She took them by the hand and they joined the continuous stream of children and teachers that crossed the footbridge on to the main line platform.

  ‘Barnstaple, Platform Five,’ she read from the announcement board, then forged a passage through the crowds of soldiers, children and mothers to the gate. Soldiers and children swarmed along the platform. Row after row of seats were taken. Carriage after carriage was filled with forlorn, silent children.

  ‘Why are the soldiers coming?’ Wolfie’s gas mask bumped his hip as he struggled to keep up with Spud’s determined stride. A calm voice was issuing a series of admonitions over a loudspeaker:

  ‘Hello, children. Please take your seats. The train leaves in a few minutes. Don’t play with the doors and windows. Thank you.’

  Spud stopped and opened the door to the final compartment. She placed the suitcases in the corridor, beside a small tear-streaked girl clutching a yellow bucket and spade. ‘Sit on your cases,’ she said, slipping a chocolate Slam Bar, probably from her own ration, into each of their pockets, then whispering to Dodo, ‘Stay together. Don’t let go. Don’t let them separate you.’

  Dodo was silent. Spud was eager to send them away. Hurt burned like a fire in her swollen, glimmering eyes.

  ‘Why are some mummies crying?’ asked Wolfie.

  ‘Because they can’t go on holiday too,’ said Spud, disentangling Wolfie’s hand from her own and placing him in the carriage.

  Dodo allowed Spud a perfunctory hug, but averted her cheek from a kiss. She climbed in beside Wolfie and sat with her head bowed. Spud shut the door, her plump hand trembling on the metal bar as she pulled the window down.

  The train pulled out, and there was Spud, running and panting, breathlessly waving a piece of paper in her one hand.

  ‘Oh, Lord!’ said Dodo. ‘That’s the paper with the name – with where we’re going . . .’

  PART II

  NORTH DEVON

  Chapter Four

  After five minutes Wolfie asked, ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

  After ten minutes, he unwrapped his Slam Bar.

  ‘It’s very far away,’ he said through a mouthful of chocolate.

  ‘Are we at the seaside?’ asked the girl with the yellow bucket. ‘Where’s the seaside?’

  A lady with a clipboard picked her way down the carriage, checking her list. She bent to talk to the girl with the yellow bucket, then turned to Dodo.

  ‘Names?’

  ‘Wolfgang and Dorothy Revel.’

  She scanned her list, tapping it with her pen as she moved from page to page. ‘You’re not down here,’ she said eventually, examining Wolfie’s label. ‘Who’s looking after you?’

  ‘Dodo is,’ said Wolfie comfortably. The lady looked at Dodo sceptically.

  ‘We’re on a private scheme,’ Dodo said, ‘we’re going to be met at Dulverton.’

  The lady made a note and moved on.

  ‘Spud’s not very good at arrangements,’ Wolfie commented.

  ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ asked Wolfie later. He held Captain in a sticky fist, clutching him like a talisman, at the same time eyeing the pair of soldiers that lounged against the window, hemmed in by stacks of kitbags in the corner of the corridor. ‘Why is the war coming on the train?’ he began, turning to Dodo, but seeing the sadness of her face, he took her hand and added, ‘There’ll be horses, Dodo.’ Then, ‘They’ll find Pa. Pa wouldn’t go missing. Definitely.’

  It grew hot and fuggy. Morning turned to afternoon, as the train stopped and started, swayed and lurched westward.

  In the early evening it shunted into a siding to allow a troop train past. Dodo heard, from the adjacent carriage, children cheering at the soldiers, saw soldiers waving their caps back.

  ‘Does Spud know that it’s a long way?’ Wolfie asked.

  Dodo shrugged and cleared a patch of the window. They peered out and saw a row of suburban terraced houses, their windows bombed out, patched with cardboard. Searchlights fingered the sky.

  ‘We’re on a mystery tour,’ Wolfie said to Captain, holding him up to the clear patch of window. ‘It’s dark, there’re no signs and we don’t know where we’re going.’

  The gleam of a guardsman’s lantern flashed along the corridor of the train. ‘Bristol, Bristol.’

  The door opened and a knot of pushing people swarmed up, servicemen hauling kitbags, civilians with suitcases. Luggage was jammed inside, piled high, the corridors now packed to the doors with soldiers and airmen. The door shut and the train swayed away.

  Later Wolfie woke briefly and looked inside the food bag. Finding it empty except for an apple, he asked Dodo, ‘But is this for all of the war? Is this all we have till the end of it?’

  Dodo ignored him.

  ‘I want to go home,’ he said after five minutes.

  ‘Dulverton, Dulverton. This train will shortly be arriving at Dulverton.’ The guard’s torch flashed randomly as he forced his way along the train. Dodo peered out and saw a sullen station house, glimmering faintly through drizzle.

  ‘Reveille,’ she said, shaking Wolfie. ‘Reveille.’ They clambered out, stumbling into soldiers and kitbags. Swarms of cold, tired children spilt on to the platform, squeezing into every corner. Drizzle shone in the dim beam of another torch. The train pulled away.

  ‘Where’re they going to put them all?’ the stationmaster with the torch wondered aloud to himself as he marshalled the tearful crew off the platform. Dodo and Wolfie wound their way through shadowy uniformed figures.

  ‘This way, this way.’

  The Somerset accent was strange and thick. Dodo waited uncertainly.

  ‘Can we go too?’ asked Wolfie.

  ‘I think someone’ll come to get us,’ said Dodo.

  ‘This way, this way. All on ’em. Get all on ’em this way.’

  Dodo didn’t move.

  ‘Yes, miss. You too. Off you go. Another train’ll be here soon. Be quick if I were you – billeting officer’ll be squeezing a quart into a pint pot with all you lot.’

  They were herded up a slanting street lined with squat houses of stern grey stone, then lined up around the four walls of what looked like a village hall. There was the sound of sobbing from most children as a nurse went round checking their heads.

  ‘We’re not supposed to be here,’ hissed Dodo.

  A gaggle of women was ushered in, bobbing and clacking, pointing and picking out children. The lady with the clipboard was conferring with another clipboard.

  ‘A girl. I just want one girl,’ one of them said.

  Another was pointing. ‘I’ll have that one, with the dark hair.’

  ‘Hold my hand, Wolfie, and don’t let anybody take you away.’

  ‘I’ll stand behind you, Dodo.’

  Wolfie ‘disappeared’ himself, comically, behind her back.

  As they waited, they heard the distant whistle and whoosh of a new train.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ said the lady with the clipboard. ‘That’s another lot of them.’ The women were still all talking at once, haggling like housewives over meat.

  ‘Is anyone asking for a boy of eight?’ whispered Wolfie.

  ‘No. Of course not. They want girls.’

  Wolfie watched a girl being ushered into a car. ‘Will we get a car, Dodo? I want to go in a car.’

  The billeting officer led a woman towards Dodo. Dodo yanked Wolfie out. ‘We’re together,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Well, who’s got room for two of you?’ the woman said, turning her back. ‘No one’ll take two of them.’

  ‘Not if he’s not big enough for farm work,’ said another.

  Again and again Dodo was picked.

  ‘
No,’ she said each time.

  There were only a handful of children left.

  ‘Can we go home now?’ Wolfie whispered.

  The second clipboard approached Dodo. ‘You’ll have to be separated.’

  ‘No,’ said Dodo.

  ‘Who are you? Name? You’re not on the list. Revel – R, R, let me see . . . no, no, you’re not on the list.’

  ‘Our housekeeper – Spud – made arrangements – someone’ll come for us . . .’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘We – we don’t know her name, we weren’t given one.’

  ‘Well, we can’t wait all night and I can’t leave you here – never mind, we’ll find somewhere. Mrs Sprig? Mrs Sprig? – Where is she? – We’ll give you to Mrs Sprig. – Mrs Sprig? – I hope you’ve got some proper warm clothes,’ she said with a doubtful look at their coats, then looked again at a woman who stood, empty handed, near the door, tying her headscarf. Hairs strayed from an uncertain sort of bun at the back of her neck. When she turned, her face, set in a prepared attitude of distaste, quivered in surprise as she took in the smart tweed coats and Dodo’s ribbons.

  ‘Oh no, I’m not having two,’ said Mrs Sprig. ‘No room.’

  ‘Now, Mrs Sprig, “three spare rooms” this list says.’

  The women conferred in whispers, Mrs Sprig turning to look at the children from time to time, her eyes close set, her lips puckered, all her features contriving to be in perpetual motion, twitchy and undecided.

  ‘Spud’s arrangements are never good,’ whispered Wolfie.

  There was more confabulation between the women, Mrs Sprig relishing the attention, the commotion of the occasion, but reluctant to take a child home, let alone two.

  ‘Well, I’ll need the registration slips then,’ she said eventually. ‘That’s what I need to get the government food and lodging money.’

  ‘I don’t want to go with Mrs Sprig,’ said Wolfie.

  ‘She looks,’ Dodo whispered, ‘like a squirrel.’

  They drew closer together.

  ‘Come along, come along. You can’t stay here,’ said the lady with the clipboard, picking up their cases and depositing them by the door.