A Horse Called Hero Read Free Page A

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