Free A Horse Called Hero by Sam Angus

tomorrow,’ said Wolfie. ‘No more eggs. Four weeks old.’ He beamed again and moved the honey to the sideboard. Hero’s head turned, monitoring the process of the
honey. Hettie left what she was busy with at the Primus stove and went to light the copper in the washhouse for the hip-bath. Dodo watched her carefully, concern in her expressive eyes.
    ‘Bed time,’ said Hettie, ‘for the three of you. The Invasion Committee’ll arrive soon and perhaps we can persuade Hero to make way for everyone.’ She tightened the
blackout curtains over the sink, lit her father’s lamp and adjusted the light-guard over it. Dodo put down her sketchpad.
    The door to the yard opened and Samuel, the first member of the Committee, appeared, running and breathless. Samuel was always in and out of Lilycombe, doing odd bits and pieces on the land.
    ‘Lower your lights. Bombs on this side,’ he urged. ‘Listen, anti-aircraft guns – Jerry’s close tonight – over the Channel somewhere.’
    ‘Up to bed,’ said Miss Lamb. ‘I’d like Hero in the boot room now, please, Wolfgang.’ Wolfie walked as slowly as he could towards the back door, Hero following, like
a dog. Dodo tidied Wolfie’s sticky plate and spoon and dragged him from the boot room where Hero was currently stabled. They went upstairs as the back door opened and more men arrived.
    ‘The water’ll be ready now,’ called Hettie.
    ‘I don’t want a bath.’ Wolfie was predictable about baths. ‘Shall we tell Pa we don’t want to come to London?’ he asked, adjusting Captain on his bedside
table so that his head faced Wolfie’s pillow. ‘That
he
must come
here
?’
    Dodo was silent, then she said, ‘Wolfie, it might be a long time till Pa can see us.’
    She’d sent a card to Pa’s barracks, another one to Spud, telling them both of their new address and of how much happier they were. Wolfie too had sent Pa a card giving Hero’s
height in hands and his current dietary requirements. He’d left a note, too, on the barn door at Windwistle saying ‘GONE TO LILYCOMBE’. Dodo wondered about the milk – about
its arrival at Lilycombe every morning – she wondered if it were brought by Ned Jervis, and if his mother Mary Jervis knew. She wondered too whether Pa had written to the Lambs: they seemed
to know a lot about Pa now.
    A while later, half thinking about Pa, half listening to the rattle of anti-aircraft guns and unable to sleep, Dodo crept to the window. From the first-floor windows at Lilycombe you could see
the Bristol Channel and sometimes all the way to Wales. There was a red glow, far away, at the mouth of the Channel. Above it, searchlights scraped the dark. Bombs were falling somewhere.
    No one talked to her at school now. Chrissie Causey no longer sat next to her. Dodo minded it all a little less since moving to Lilycombe, though she would never go into a shop again unless she
was with Miss Lamb. Did Pa guess that people would be cruel to them? she wondered. Did he know that Spud had forced them out of Addison Avenue, did he suspect that their leaving Hollowcombe had
anything to do with him?
    She watched the searchlights, crossing and crisscrossing, and hypnotic. The droning had grown in volume, the planes must be close. Suddenly there were bombs falling nearby, the floors of the
house rattling as in an earthquake. Wolfie was calling to her, reaching out to the bedside table for Captain. She took his hand and they crept halfway down the stairs, shivering, and sat listening
to the voices beyond the door, thinking of the fire in there, of the comfort of being in there.
    ‘That’s over two hundred incendiaries,’ Father Lamb was saying. ‘Close.’
    Dodo and Wolfie shifted down another step towards the door. ‘Who has the Minute Book? Good. Note. Twenty shovels,’ Samuel was saying. ‘Twenty spades. Ten pickaxes. Ten
wheelbarrows.’
    ‘How many horses?’ said Father Lamb.
    The roar of the planes was dimming.
    ‘Thirty.’