A Horse for Angel

by Sarah Lean

  I had lied, but I thought Rita would understand when I told her the truth as soon as Angel gave the case back. Which was going to be any minute now.

  “Well, this is a first,” Rita said. “Now come on inside and put the kettle on, love. Three cups.”

  Angel didn’t come. She must have gone to get my case at last because I’d helped her just like she asked me to.

  I got the tea things from the kitchen and took in what we needed on a tray. Rita was sitting on the side of her bed.

  “Why did you say this is a first?” I said. “Did you mean people can’t normally find Angel?”

  Rita put her cup back on the saucer. She was looking at me in that way people do when they’re wondering about you.

  “I meant that when they do find her they don’t usually stick around very long.” Her eyebrows were up as if she’d said enough. I saw her point. But then Rita said, “She doesn’t usually let them.”

  And that was the moment when something inside me changed. Everything stopped in my head, all the wondering about what Angel might have done. A stronger feeling swept over me, one that made my insides ache. I realised I knew what it meant when you don’t let people stick around. You’re scared that they don’t really want to know you, that when they do they’ll leave you anyway. So you make yourself not care about them first. Maybe Angel and I were more alike than I had imagined. It was as if Angel had walked right inside me and I knew something about her, and myself, something more fragile than broken eggshells. It was as if those fragments were in my hands and I could crush them.

  I realised then that Angel had come in the house and was listening, half hiding behind the door.

  I poured some tea for her.

  “Three sugars,” said Rita. “Same as Mr Hemsworth used to have.”

  I stirred the sugar and carried the rattling cup and saucer over to Angel, as if it was the eggshells. And I could tell by her face that she was just as surprised as I was at what Rita had said. It was like going off the edge of the map. Who knew where we were now?

  Angel took the cup without saying thanks and left me standing there with the saucer. She didn’t have my case.

  “Now sit down, Angel,” Rita said. “And tell me what’s going on.”

  Angel didn’t sit and she started to say, “Old Chambers said—” but Rita was having none of it.

  “I don’t want to hear that Old Chambers is letting you look after Belle. According to Mrs Barker, Old Chambers says the horse has gone missing and she’s helping him look for her.”

  Rita took a breath and her voice softened.

  “You didn’t ask him, did you?”

  Angel curled up on the window seat and raked her hands through her hair, messing it up even more than it already was. And that seemed to be a message to Rita.

  “All right, all right,” she said gently.

  Rita took a step towards Angel, but then seemed to change her mind. And I knew too that Angel wouldn’t be able to let her near.

  “Angel, love,” Rita said. “You know I have no choice but to sell Belle at the auction. Where is she? Did you take Mrs Barker’s goat?”

  Angel buried her eyes in her hands, under her wild hair.

  “I can’t find Belle,” she said. “Don’t tell Mrs Barker I’m here. You know she doesn’t like me.”

  Rita tapped her lip. Her puzzled eyes tightened. She stared and stared at Angel. Angel wouldn’t budge. Whatever secrets she was hiding, she wasn’t going to tell.

  “Drink your tea,” Rita said. “I expect you’re hungry too.”

  She went out to the kitchen and left us there, giving Angel a knowing nod, as if she was giving her the opportunity to say something to me. It was silent except for Angel sucking her tea up with her breath. So I slurped too. It’s not the sort of thing I would normally do, but somehow it seemed just right. I saw her dazzling eyes turn up.

  I heard plates being put out in the kitchen, the rumble of the microwave.

  And what I was thinking just then was that I did care about the eggshells in my hands and I could choose what happened next.

  Angel uncurled in the window seat, her fingers smoothing the corner of the green velvet curtains, shaking her hair away from her face as if she had been pretending how much she was bothered by what Rita had said. I knew I was in the corner of her eye. I guessed maybe it hadn’t been an act. But I couldn’t really be sure about anything to do with her.

  Then she muttered, “Why are you still here?”

  I ignored how that made me feel. The door between us had opened and I didn’t want it to slam shut again.

  “Because you’ve got something of mine,” I said. “And because you want me here.”

  She only looked at me for half a second, then closed her eyes and shook her head. My turn to play her game.

  “That’s why you took my case, so I’d have to come and find you,” I said, glad I was getting a reaction from her. “And I’m here for two weeks and I’ve got nothing better to do.”

  I watched her eyes darting about under a frown.

  “I wish you’d just go away,” she muttered.

  “But you tell lies. And,” I said, realising I was getting her riled, “I want to help. I could take the goat back to Mrs Barker, then she won’t have to know you’re here.”

  I didn’t know I was going to say that, but right then I knew I meant it. Then the frown and scowl were gone and Angel smiled.

  Rita was in the doorway, hands on hips, interested in this bit of our conversation. But it was just for Angel and me. I held my ground and waited. Rita nodded to herself and returned to the kitchen. Cutlery clattered.

  Angel left her cup on the windowsill and wandered around the room, running her hand over things, not looking at me. She came up behind where I was sitting on a stool. I thought I’d started to work out what Angel was like. She was probably making faces at me behind my back. But before I could put my cup and saucer down to turn around, I felt Angel’s fingers combing through my hair. She started plaiting, turning my hair gently.

  “If you really want to help,” Angel said, with a smirk in her voice, “you’re going to have to help me catch the goat first.”

  I felt the tug at the back of my neck when she pulled the plait taut and tied it.

  “I thought that’s what was in the stable!” I said.

  She laughed.

  “You guessed wrong.”

  I felt the plait fall against my shoulder, heard the soft patter of feet as she ran out, snatching a plate of food and crisps from Rita in the doorway as she went.

  Rita snuffed a soft laugh. She seemed to know Angel well, but it felt like I had joined in a story in the middle of the book. And now I felt like an idiot again. I’d got it all wrong and she still hadn’t given back what belonged to me.

  Then I realised that, even if she wasn’t hiding Mrs Barker’s goat in the stable, she was hiding something in there. She’d lied again, but I’d guessed what it was: Belle, the black-and-white horse. But I had no idea why, or what was really going on.

  HAT EVENING MUM TELEPHONED AND TOLD ME she was tired and only had a few days left to prepare before the conference. I told her I was wide awake and she said it must be the fresh country air, and I said or maybe the big sky and I could tell she was smiling. Afterwards I asked Aunt Liv if I could go out again and she said yes, but not for long.

  I couldn’t stay away from Angel and not just because I didn’t have the case back.

  The caravan door was open. I could see Angel sitting across the armchair. She didn’t say anything when I went in, and she didn’t seem surprised either, as if she had been waiting for me. She moved her legs and I sat on the warm arm of the chair where they had been.

  “You promised you would give my case back,” I said.

  Her eyes narrowed. It made me want to take up less space on the chair.

  “Tell me why you want it first,” she said.

  I wanted to be able to tell someone about the carousel, about how I needed
to put it back together again and find the tin girl. I didn’t want to be a liar, not like her. It’s so hard to hide things. I wanted to tell someone. Should I tell her?

  The longer it took me to answer, the fiercer Angel’s eyes pierced mine. I could see her mouth changing, not smirking any more but smiling. And I knew I wanted to tell her, I wanted to share more with her. Then we heard footsteps running towards the caravan.

  “Don’t let them in,” Angel whispered, slipping to the floor.

  I closed the door behind me and hurried down the steps towards the widening halo of a torch.

  “Nell! Mum says you’ve got to come see,” Alfie said. “Maggie’s having her babies. Now!”

  Maggie the pig was lying on her side in a thick bed of straw, grunting and panting. She’d already had two babies, mini pink and gold and black piglets wriggling in the straw.

  “I’m glad they found you,” Aunt Liv said. “I thought you might like to see this.”

  Well, I did. And I didn’t.

  I decided I felt happier staying at the head end and watched Aunt Liv as she rubbed with a towel each piglet that was born. Then she passed them to Alfie and Alfie passed them to Gem and Gem held them out to me. And I thought about holding them, but I was too scared I might do something wrong, so she laid them with Maggie, telling her what she had named each of them – Grunty and Bunty and Humpty, all of their names rhyming. Aunt Liv spoke to Maggie gently, each time she grunted, called her a good old girl.

  We were there for ages. It was dark except for the torch that Alfie hung on a hook above us. It made a warm yellow circle around Maggie and her staggering piglets. And then I started to see that they were actually beautiful but tiny and helpless until they lay with their mother. And you could just watch them all together and everything got more and more beautiful, right there in the golden straw.

  I sensed something before I realised what was happening. In Aunt Liv’s anxious hands. The way she moved away from us, out of the light, turning her body to hide what she held.

  “Oh, no,” she said softly.

  Maggie had suddenly gone quiet, panting hard.

  “Alfie, you and Gem run up to the house and call the vet. Take the torch. Now, please,” Aunt Liv urged. “Nell, would you take this from me?”

  The straw rustled under my knees as I knelt down and Aunt Liv handed me a bundle.

  “I’m sorry to do this to you, Nell, but I need to help Maggie out right now,” Aunt Liv said, and turned away. “I think it’s too late, but try rubbing it.”

  She felt around Maggie, talked quietly to her, saying, “Come on, there’s a good girl. Don’t give up now.”

  I couldn’t move, terrified of the tiny weight in my hands, of the loose little body wrapped in the towel.

  “Nell,” Aunt Liv said. “Just try.”

  I rubbed, scared and trembling. The piglet rolled silently between my palms. There was a piece of straw stuck to its glistening skin. It shouldn’t have been there, but I couldn’t touch it and I couldn’t make it go away.

  Suddenly I felt someone kneeling beside me in the shadows. Her! She took the piglet and swung it head first towards the ground. I reached out, thinking she was hurting it when it was already dead. She put her hand out, pushed me away. She stepped back from me, laid the piglet along her leg and scooped her fingers in its mouth. Silently and quickly her hands moved. She swung it again, blew into its nose, turned it over and rubbed.

  She wrapped the towel back round it, laid it on my lap and vanished into the dark.

  Alfie and Gem ran back in. “Mr Thomas is coming,” Alfie puffed. “He’ll be here in a minute.”

  “Thank you, Alfie. But I think Maggie’s going to be all right, aren’t you, girl? Look, the next one’s on its way.”

  Aunt Liv looked over her shoulder at me, shook her hair away from her face.

  “Nell?”

  She reached out to take the piglet back from me. I unwrapped the towel and held it out to her. The piglet quivered; tiny black eyes looked up.

  “Look,” I whispered. “It’s alive.”

  “Oh, well done, Nell,” Aunt Liv breathed.

  Gem hugged me and kissed the piglet.

  “It’s the magic, Nell,” she whispered. “It’s the hundredth horse magic. It’s here and it’s making you magic too!”

  My mouth opened, but I couldn’t say what had happened. Angel had come and made a miracle and nobody saw it except me.

  I suddenly had a strange feeling. Isn’t that what real angels did? Watched over and protected us just at the time between life and death.

  ARLY MORNING I RACED ROUND TO THE FARM TO see Angel. Maybe she really was an angel. Maybe we don’t even know what one is.

  She was in the yard. And she had become someone else to me now, now I’d seen what she’d done. But she looked like she was going to run away from me.

  “Aunt Liv let me name the piglet,” I said, following her across the yard.

  She went to a stable door and closed it without looking at me.

  “I called it Gabriel, after the angel,” I said. “Like you…?”

  I saw her startled eyes. I saw her jaw go tight, her cheeks blush, as she turned away and tied some string round the latch to keep it shut.

  “I’m just saying thanks,” I said. “How did you do it?”

  Angel looked at me for just a second and then walked away.

  “Really, I want to know,” I said.

  She carried on as if she was heading for the lane. I was almost shouting now, watching her back, staring at the big coat that covered her. Was she hiding something under there too, like Gem had said? Maybe the feathers that she’d been collecting. What did she want them for anyway? I shook my head to clear the wild ideas that sparkled in my mind like glitter in a snow globe. I wasn’t used to feeling like this. I just wanted her to stay.

  “I didn’t tell anyone it was you that saved Gabriel!” I said, staying put outside the stable where the grass was flattened. “I think I know what’s in the stable. If you tell me, I’ll tell you about my case.”

  It was all I had to bargain with. She stopped and turned back. There was a curve in the corner of her mouth. I saw the sky in her eyes.

  “Help me catch Mrs Barker’s goat,” she said.

  HHH!” SHE SAID, TURNING AROUND AND PULLING me down into a crouch. She clamped a warm hand over my mouth.

  I was just trying to tell her how sweet Gabriel was (later Aunt Liv told me it was a she piglet not a he, but it was too late to change her name), that when I put her back down with Maggie, I just wanted to pick her right back up again. And I could see Angel was getting fed up with me going on and on, but that she was also trying not to smile.

  “I get it. You love her,” she said, as if it happened every day of her life. “Now shush. What do you know about goats?”

  “Nothing,” I mumbled through her fingers, “so don’t go making me look stupid or anything.”

  Angel bit her lip to hide her smile and took her hand away.

  “At first I really thought you had the goat in the stable,” I whispered.

  She glanced, her eyes narrow, but she ignored what I’d just said.

  “Goats can be stubborn and Dorothy won’t like it if you make a loud noise. When I took her—”

  “You did steal the goat!”

  “Shhh,” she said. “I never said I didn’t.”

  At least she admitted it. She told me what had happened the day the chickens escaped, just like that, even though I didn’t ask. She said she was stealing the goat from Mrs Barker and somebody went past, so she hid it in one of the chicken barns. But then the goat got scared of all the chickens squawking and flapping so she opened the door and then had to run because somebody was coming. She didn’t have time to close the barn door and gate behind her.

  “The chickens wanted to see the sky anyway,” she said.

  My mouth hung open.

  “I knew that too,” I said, but she had already moved on.

  �
�The goat keeps getting away. She was in the stable—” She smirked because my mouth fell open again and I breathed in sharply. “But not when you thought she was.” I closed my mouth again. How was I supposed to know what was true? She continued.

  “I have to let Dorothy out, but she goes off into your Aunt Liv’s fields because she likes to eat the herbs and I have to keep finding her,” she said, like it was just ordinary, everyday stuff to her. “So, if we move slowly and show her something even nicer to eat, she’ll follow us.” Her eyes flashed. “Try not to spook her as well.”

  Which wasn’t fair, but anyway I said, “OK. Where is she?”

  She pointed ahead of us. “Just there.”

  The goat’s head was pushed through the bushes, her chin and beard going round and round as she chewed.

  Angel had some pieces of carrot and apple in her pocket and held them out. Dorothy the goat pushed her saggy middle through the bush and appeared in front of us. She had plump udders hanging down, bony hips and dirty knobbly knees. Her golden eyes were very interested in what we had in our hands.

  Angel coaxed her down the hillside, feeding her small pieces of the carrot like they were sweets. Then she let me lure her into the yard with apple chunks. It made me giggle, Dorothy’s soft lips nibbling at my fingers.

  “You can go now,” Angel said, tying some rope round the goat’s neck.

  “But I said I’d take her back to Mrs Barker,” I said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Why are you keeping her?”

  Angel’s mouth twitched from side to side.

  “For the milk,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “Have you got that thing where you can’t drink cow’s milk?”

  She seemed to think for a whole minute.

  “No, I haven’t,” she said, frowning. “Just go now.”

  I wished she wouldn’t do that. Angel had a way of making me feel part of her, then as if I was nothing to do with her at all. But then she said, “If you go away now, you can come with me and find the horse later.”

  “But…!”