‘He’s twelve pounds, isn’t he? I’ve brought the money,’ she answered opening her purse.
I wondered why she wanted me as the old man led me out into the daylight, saying, ‘You’re in luck after all.’ And I was sorry for Starlight, for I knew now that he had no future, only the humane killer.
‘I’m leading him home,’ said my new mistress mounting her mare. ‘It’s twelve miles. Do you think he will make it?’
‘If you take it slowly he will.’
‘I promised an old school friend that I would buy him. Her name is Bastable. Her husband was killed last week in France,’ she said. ‘He’s going to live in honourable retirement.’
Starlight neighed. I was sorry to leave him to his fate alone; I wished that he could have come with us. If I could have spoken I would have pleaded for him, begged for his life, as it was I neighed a long sad farewell and hoped that his end would be swift and painless.
11
MY LAST HOME
IT WAS A long way. I grew very tired. We stopped to rest me and once I recognised the landscape and saw that we had halted nearby to where I was born. But everything was changed. The old buildings were falling down with neglect; the hedges had been replaced by sagging barbed wire. The trees under which we had stood on hot summer days were gone and, worst of all, the paddock near the house had houses on it. I felt very sad when I saw the change. The fields were being ploughed by two tractors. A different breed of cow was waiting to be milked.
We went on, my new mistress, who was called Jean, whistling as we went, the dun mare saying, ‘Can’t you walk any faster? I want to get home.’
I wondered whether Starlight had been shot yet. There were pill boxes [machine-gun positions] at the side of the roads, but not many soldiers to be seen. Then we saw a sandbagged post with a large gun pointing towards the sky. Soon afterwards we turned down a lane and came to an old white cottage with roses climbing up its walls.
Two children and a dog came to greet us. The boy was called Paul, the girl Sonia. They both had fair hair like their mother.
‘Gosh he looks awful,’ Sonia said.
‘Do you think he’s going to live?’
‘Yes, if he has the chance.’
‘Mummy, I’ve milked Tiddlywinks,’ said Paul.
‘And I’ve fed Jemina,’ said Sonia.
It wasn’t a smart place. There were no servants. They did everything themselves. But it was a happy house, perhaps the happiest place I had ever known. Every animal had a name and was loved and looked after. If the chickens were ill they were taken indoors to be warm, if the cat had a bad foot it was tenderly bandaged up. Oats were rationed and I and the dun mare, who was called Amelia, did not qualify for a ration, but there was always plenty of sweet smelling home-made hay. The children rode Amelia and were members of the pony club. They spent hours learning stable management from books. They fussed over our food, as though we were invalids.
On wet days they played a gramophone to us to keep us amused. They fought over who should wind it up and tried to decide which record we preferred. Sometimes they dressed us up in their own clothes. The stable was only an old cow shed, but they had made it into two boxes and they were always bedded down in plenty of straw, so we were always warm and comfortable. Gradually the shine came back to my coat; my sides started to fill out, the poverty marks on my quarters grew less pronounced. Amelia was only six. She had never had a bad home. She was fourteen hands high and full of life. She would never believe my stories.
‘Humans are not like that,’ she would say. ‘Humans are lovely.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you had belonged to Mr Smith or Mr Chambers,’ I answered.
‘Well I haven’t and I don’t believe they exist,’ she would answer with a snort. ‘You wait until you see our master, he’s lovely too.’
She would spend hours licking the children’s hands, while I stood aloof, too nervous to approach, afraid of a sudden blow.
The days grew warmer and the sky was full of planes. My new master came home one evening exhausted, his face blackened, his eyes crying out for sleep. He said that things were going very badly and that soon the Germans would be coming and that we must be ready and he gave Jean a gun to use on herself and the children if things got bad. Then he bought a cart and a set of harness and he said that one of us must be put to use to help the war effort. Then his leave was over and he disappeared again and Jean and the children sat and cried, and for the next three nights all we heard was gunfire. It made me feel very nervous but Amelia who had never been ill treated was not afraid. She insisted that it was nothing but thunder, but I knew differently for Warrior had told me about war. After that there was gunfire and bombs and great lights wheeling in the sky night after night and no one slept much. Sonia and Paul would go out early in the morning looking for bits of shrapnel, while Jean waited sad-eyed for the post to come. Everything was in short supply. But Jean never grumbled. She would say, ‘We’re the lucky ones, because we live in the country and can grow things.’
Then one day we saw planes chasing each other in the sky.
‘They are only playing,’ said Amelia.
I knew differently of course – I knew that the men inside were trying to kill each other, and I wondered why man is always fighting and killing. Then one of the planes started coming down in a pall of smoke, and Jean and the children came running from the cottage. Soon we could see men like toys dangling from the sky on parachutes and the children started to shout and wave.
Then Jean said in a strange voice, ‘They are Germans. Go for help one of you.’
Amelia was tearing round the field by this time, her tail up over her back, snorting like a mustang. Sonia fetched a head collar.
Jean said, ‘It will have to be Black Velvet. Can you manage him?’
‘I’ll try,’ replied Paul. It was many months since I had been ridden, but I stood as quietly as I could and pushed my nose into the head collar. Paul jumped on my back off a gate.
The Germans were untangling themselves from their parachutes two fields away.
I turned quickly. Paul gripped me tightly with his small bony knees.
‘Be careful. Godspeed,’ shouted Jean.
We galloped up the lane and turned left, Paul crouching on my withers like a jockey. I wasn’t fit, but I galloped as fast as I could along the tarmac road. Outside a cottage, an old lady stood staring over her gate. ‘Have they come? Is it the invasion?’ she cried.
‘No. They’ve been shot down,’ yelled Paul. We had reached a police house now. Paul slipped off my back and rapped on the door. A policeman came out carrying his helmet.
‘A German plane has been shot down,’ shouted Paul. ‘Some men have landed by our house.’ The policeman ran for his bike.
Paul patted my neck. ‘You’re lovely,’ he said. ‘Better than Amelia even.’
He rode me slowly back.
By the time we had reached the house the men were being taken away. One had his face bandaged, another had half an arm missing. They looked fine young men. I felt very sad when I saw them. I could see the charred remains of the plane and Sonia stood waving a bit of wing triumphantly. After that the children and Jean started to ride me quietly and then they put me in the cart and soon I was trotting up and down the empty wartime roads to the shop and back.
I was glad to be of some use. Horses can become bored just like humans and I was tired of my retirement.
12
BAD NEWS
THERE FOLLOWED A long hard winter. It was very cold; sometimes so cold that the children didn’t even go to school. We spent the nights in our warm looseboxes, but there was nothing but hay to eat and once, for a few days, only oat straw.
I lost condition again but continued working, pulling the cart, which was more of a farm cart than a carriage. More than once I heard Jean say,
‘I don’t know what we would do without old Velvet.’
The children drove me to nearby woods and came back with the c
art loaded with firewood. It snowed for days on end. The holly trees were bright with berries. But at last spring came.
Jean borrowed a harrow and I harrowed the fields. Summer came and I pulled a hay cutter. One day Jean came outside with a letter in her hand. The children were cutting nettles to make us nettle hay.
Her face looked crumpled and exhausted. She called: ‘Come over here please.’ She put her arms around them and said, ‘This has just come.’
‘It is about Daddy, isn’t it? He’s dead,’ said Paul. Sonia didn’t speak.
‘It say’s he’s missing, believed killed,’ replied Jean. ‘But only believed. They haven’t found him.’
‘Found him?’ asked Sonia.
‘His body,’ replied Paul.
They stayed close together without speaking and I was very sorry for them. ‘The master’s dead,’ I told Amelia.
‘We don’t belong to him, we belong to Jean, she feeds us,’ Amelia replied.
‘Silly ignorant mare,’ I retorted though I am not usually rude. ‘He’s dead and he was a fine young man and it will affect us all.’
The next day there was much talk of selling the farm and leaving. I knew that if that happened there was no hope for me. I was twenty years old now and very tired. My back was hollow, and old saddle sores had left grey hairs on my back and withers. Lack of oats made me tire easily and, though I did my best, I knew I couldn’t work as I had when I was younger.
Jean and the children understood this and let me go at my own pace and, as I always did my best, they never used a whip or stick.
I was worried now. I had been very happy. I had no wish to start again in a new home. Fortunately after much talk, it was decided that Jean and the children should stay where they were to the end of the war.
Jemina died and the children put her body in a black box and put me in the cart and dressed themselves in black. I had to pull her coffin to a small grave by the pond where she was buried. It seemed odd to bury a little duck with such ceremony when so many young men were dying all over the world.
Another winter came. Everyone had become accustomed to our master being dead. Paul tried hard to be the man about the house, chopping the wood and digging the vegetable patch. Sonia rode Amelia most of the time now. She was too silly to pull the cart so she was kept mostly for pleasure, though sometimes she was ridden into the nearby town to do the shopping.
Jean looked very worn. She was trying to make a living out of the land and soon I was carrying vegetables and fruit into the nearby town on market day. Then two cows were bought and more chickens.
Then one night, Paul came running out to the stable with a torch.
‘Wake up, Black Velvet, you’re needed. Sonia’s very ill. And there’s no petrol anywhere and the bikes are punctured. You’ll have to take her to the doctor in the cart.’
He pushed my head into the collar and threw the rest of the harness over my back. I pushed my head into the bridle. I had been to market once already that day and was tired, but I knew by the urgency in Paul’s voice that this was a matter of life or death. He dragged me outside and pushed me between the shafts of the cart. There was a bright moon shining and everything was frozen. Jean came out carrying Sonia wrapped in blankets.
‘I’ll be all right soon,’ said Sonia between chattering teeth. ‘If only it didn’t hurt. I’m sorry, Mummy. I know I’m being a nuisance, but it does hurt.’
‘A nuisance? Don’t be so silly. You’ve got an appendicitis and if I hadn’t been so busy with the cow calving, and it being market day and everything else, I would have noticed hours ago.’
And with that she put her gently into the cart propped up against the seat with pillows and got up herself, her face very white. Paul jumped in the back.
‘Steady. Go gently, Black Velvet,’ Jean said.
I did my best. The road was covered with ice. How I stayed on my legs I shall never know. Sonia was moaning all the time and I could hear Paul’s voice saying, ‘It’s going to be all right, Mummy.’
‘What do you mean – all right? If her appendix bursts the poison will be all over her body; and it will be my fault if she dies, because I didn’t know it was so bad when she complained earlier. I shall have killed her, Paul,’ replied Jean.
I heard Sonia say, very quietly, ‘No Mummy,’ And Paul said:
‘She’ll be all right. We are going to get there in time.’ But I could hear how worried he was and knew he was only trying to comfort his mother.
‘Sometimes I think I have had enough,’ she went on. ‘If your father was coming home, if the farm paid, if anything went right it would be different.’
‘You’re tired,’ Paul answered. ‘Tired to death.’
We had reached the Doctor’s house. Paul ran to the door and started beating upon it with his fists. Presently a window was opened and a lady said, ‘What is it? The doctor’s gone to Pickwicks. There’s been an explosion. A bomb I think. There’s lots of dead.’
‘My daughter has an appendicitis,’ shouted Jean. ‘It’s urgent.’
‘There’s many dead and injured,’ replied the lady shutting the window.
‘Let’s try another doctor. We can telephone from the kiosk,’ Paul said.
He jumped out of the cart and ran up the road, but was soon back saying, ‘It doesn’t work. The line is dead. We had better drive on to the hospital. We may meet someone. Come on.’
Jean jerked the reins and I set off as fast as I could on the slippery road. Sonia had stopped moaning. Jean kept saying, ‘Faster, Black Velvet. Come on. Move on.’
The road was empty. There were houses, but you couldn’t see them because their windows were blacked out. We had no lamps at all on the cart. Snow started to fall in small, white flakes.
‘I can hear something coming,’ shouted Paul. He leapt out of the cart and stood waving in the road.
‘Are you going into town? We’ve got a sick person here. She’s dying,’ he shouted.
The car stopped. A man leaned out. ‘Jump inside,’ he shouted.
‘Go on Mummy,’ yelled Paul. ‘I’ll take Black Velvet back.’
The man helped Jean lift Sonia gently into the car. She couldn’t move her legs by this time and she was groaning all the time.
‘Right you are,’ said the man and the car was gone.
‘Home,’ said Paul, fighting back tears. ‘I’ll walk with you, Velvet. I’m so cold it may warm me up.’
It was a long cold road home before Paul put me away in the stable. ‘I’m sorry there’s no mash for you, no oats,’ he said giving me a carrot. ‘One day this war will be over and we’ll give you a great bucketful of oats, but now I must go in, though I would rather stay with you, for the fire is out and the house is freezing.’
Jean came back the next morning on the bus. She had not slept all night. ‘She’s not out of danger yet,’ she said. ‘It burst. I just came back to milk the cows.’
‘I can manage, but I would like to see her sometime,’ said Paul with a break in his voice. ‘Is she going to die?’
‘They say so. They say there’s no hope.’
The next few days were terrible, even Amelia was affected, because she thought the world of Sonia. We hardly saw Jean, neighbours came and fed us when they could and a strange boy milked the two cows.
Gloom hung over the little farm like a big dark cloud, none of us cared much if we lived or died.
Then one morning Paul came running down to the stable crying ‘She’s out of danger; she’s going to be all right. She’s saved, Velvet – saved.’ And he put his arms round my neck and buried his face in my mane.
Then, after some weeks had passed, Sonia came back looking pale and fragile and needing extra food which wasn’t there, though there was plenty of milk now because of the cows, and eggs too, and vegetables, so we were luckier than most people.
The roads were crammed with soldiers now in tanks and armoured vehicles; they came down to the farm for water. There were many Americans and Canadians. They said
they had come to save us from the Germans.
Then suddenly they were all gone and people seemed a little more cheerful and there was talk of when the war was over. But Jean never talked about it though once I heard her say,
‘When peace comes I shan’t feel like celebrating, because I shall know then that Alan will never come back.’
Sonia grew stronger. Paul grew taller and we could all see that soon he would be a man. And then suddenly part of the war was over and people lit great bonfires and danced and there was much singing.
Jean stayed inside with the children without saying much, though a few days later she said, ‘We will have to sort out our future soon. We can’t go on here. It’s too isolated for just us three, and what shall I do, Paul, when you go away? When you are grown up.’
‘I’ll stay with you, Mummy,’ Sonia said. ‘And there’s always the horses.’ But Jean was determined to go now. ‘You need friends she told the children and you will never make friends here. You’ll want to go to dances.’
Then the rest of the war ended and the church bells rang, and all the houses were lit up again, and then the soldiers started to come home.
Everyone was much merrier in the village and there was talk of more food soon.
Jean decided to sell the farm. ‘I want to be near to relations,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand the loneliness any more. We can find Amelia a nice home; but Velvet will have to be put down.’
We were all older. Sonia and Paul were fifteen and I was well past twenty. I stood under the trees a lot now remembering the past. I had seen many changes. I had lived through a fearful war. I had seen the emergence of a new style of riding. I had witnessed horses being driven from the farms by tractors and watched them come back in wartime. I was content to go peacefully. I had been very happy on the farm. I was grateful for the years there.
A notice was nailed up at the front of the house saying FOR SALE. The children cried. The cows were sold. Amelia grew anxious now. I wanted to give her good advice but she would not listen.
Black Beauty's Family Page 21