Free Celandine by Steve Augarde Page A

word was cut short as one of the yard boys burst into the stable, very red-faced and out of breath. ‘Beamer ain’t right, Robert! There be zummat the matter wi’ ’un! I can’t get ’un to stand up!’
    Robert turned, his face twisted in astonishment. ‘
Beamer?
What the bl—’ Robert rose to his feet and hurried after the others.
    Celandine was left alone, still staring at the body of Tobyjug. She couldn’t seem to move, or even blink. She was aware of the growing commotion in the yard outside, the shouted instructions of Hughes the foreman, the clatter of boots as a boy was sent running for the veterinary surgeon. She was aware of the men that were gathering further down the stable block, heard how their voices dwindled to respectful silence, and knew that her father must have arrived to see what the matter was. All their concern was for Beamer. The huge black shire was the farm’s leading team horse, and of far greater importance to them than a child’s pony. Tobyjug had been forgotten, and so had she. Beamer’s life mattered more.
    Not to her, though. Nothing could ever matter more than this. Tobyjug was dead. Every creature on the farm, large or small, might now die and she wouldn’t care.
    Eleven days. She had written it in her journal only last night. Tobyjug had been part of her life for just eleven days. And now he was . . . poisoned?
Poisoned
. The word floated around her head, a droning buzz, a sound with no meaning. Normally it was warm in here, warm with the living heat of her pony and the scent of fresh hay. Now a cold stillness settled upon her, and the air smelled sour. The buzzing noise in her head became an actual fly that sped across her vision, disappeared for a second, and then reappeared as a sudden dark speck on Tobyjug’s white cheek. Celandine watched as the fly meandered across the dull surface of the pony’s eye. Her own eyes blinked in horrified reaction and she juddered back into consciousness again. She could stay in here no longer.
    Celandine left the stable and wandered out into the piercing sunlight. She shaded her eyes as a dark-coated figure dodged past her. The veterinary surgeon, just this minute arrived, though too late to be of any help to her. Celandine crossed the yard and entered the farmhouse, unnoticed, and speaking to no one. She climbed the stairs to her bedroom. It was Sunday. She automatically began to get herself ready for church.
    By the next morning there had been word from the veterinary surgeon that rat poison was almost certainly the cause of Tobyjug’s death. Part of a mangled brown paper bag had been found in a hay bale. It was thought that the bag, which had contained poison pellets, might somehow have become caught up in the new baling machine. The veterinary surgeon was doubtful that this could have been a deliberate act. None could have known that this particular bale of hay would have been fed to Tobyjug and Beamer. It was unfortunate, but it was an accident. The better news was that Beamer had survived the critical hours of darkness. It looked as though he might recover after all.
    Celandine rose late, after a miserable night, to face the jolting emptiness of her loss all over again. She couldn’t cry. Since Tobyjug’s death she had hardly made a sound, had barely managed to murmur in response to her mother’s few inadequate words of sympathy. She felt sick and shaky – but the shakiness was as of something trapped inside her, something that wanted to come out. The sickness made her stomach hurt as though it were she who had eaten poison.
    She sat at the parlour window and watched the activity in the farmyard – all the useless, pointless routines that she had witnessed a thousand times before; the egg woman arriving on her bicycle, Young Wilfrid driving the dung cart around to the back of the stables, Mr Hughes counting the milk churns outside the dairy before hurrying on. Why did they? How could they, after what had