gave him an awful licking, so the lad went home with a bleeding nose. Father went and put the swallow’s eggs back. Next thing Father knows, the boy’s mother comes round and boxes his ears for him, and he gets sent to bed without any tea. Not hardly fair when you think about it, is it? Anyway, putting the eggs back didn’t do no good. Mother bird never came back.
‘Father was always getting into scrapes when he was a lad. But the worst scrape he ever got hisself into was the war, First World War. And just like with the swallow’s eggs, he didn’t want to fight anyone. It just happened. This time it was all on account of the horse. See, he didn’t go off to the war because he wanted to fight for King and Country like lots of others did. It wasn’t like that. He went because his horse went, because Joey went.
‘Father was just a farm boy when the war broke out; fourteen, that’s all. Like me, he didn’t get a lot of schooling. He never reckoned much to schooling and that. He said you could learn most of what was worth knowing from keeping your eyes and ears peeled. Best way of learning, he always said, was doing. He was right enough there, I reckon. Anyway, that’s by the by. He had this young colt, broke him to halter, broke him to ride, broke him to plough. Joey, he called him. He had four white socks on him, a white cross on his forehead, and he was bay. Turned out to be his best friend in all the world. They had an old mare, too. Zoey, she was called; and the two of them ploughed like they’d been born to it, which they was, I suppose. Weren’t a team of working horses in the parish to touch them. Joey was strong as an ox, and gentle as a lamb. Zoey had the brains, kept the furrow straight as an arrow.
But it was Joey Father loved best. If ever he got sick, Father would bed down with him in his stable and never leave his side. He loved that horse like a brother, more maybe.
‘Anyway, one day, a few months after the war started, Father goes off to market to sell some fat sheep. In them days of course, you had to drive them down the road to market. No lorries, nothing like that. So he was gone most of the day. Meanwhile the army’s come to the village looking for good sturdy horses, and they’re paying good money too. They needed all the horses they could get for the cavalry, for pulling the guns maybe, or the ammunition wagons, ambulances too. Most things was horse-drawn in them days. Father comes back from market, and sees Joey being taken away. It’s too late to stop it. It was his own father that did it. He’d gone and sold Joey to the army for forty pounds. More like forty pieces of silver, I’d say.
‘Father always said he was drunk and he didn’t mean no harm by it, but I don’t reckon that’s any sort of excuse, do you?
And do you know, I never heard Father say a harsh word about it after. He was like that. Kindest man that ever lived, my father. Big and gentle, just like Joey. But he had spirit all right.
Couple of weeks later he’s upped and gone, gone to join up, gone to find Joey. He had to tell the recruiting sergeant he was sixteen, but he wasn’t of course. He was tall enough though, and his voice was broke. So off he goes to France. Gone for a soldier at fourteen.
‘Now there’s millions of men over there, millions of horses, too. Needle in a haystack you might think, and you’d be right. It took him three years of looking, but he never gave up. Just staying alive was the difficult bit. Hell on earth, he called it. Always waiting, waiting to go up to the front line, waiting in the trenches with the whizzbangs and shells bursting all around you, waiting for the whistle to send you out over the top and across No-Man’s-Land, waiting for the bullet that had your name on it.
‘He was wounded a couple of times in the leg, lucky wounds, he said.
You were always a lot safer in hospital than in the trenches. But his ears started ringing with all the thunder of the shells, and he had that trouble all his life afterwards. He saw things out there in France, terrible things that don’t bear thinking about, his friends blowed up, horses drowned dead in the mud before his very eyes. And all the while he never forgot Joey, never forgot what he’d come for.
‘Then, at first light one morning, he’s on “stand-to” in the trenches waiting for the Germans to attack, and he looks through the mist and there’s this horse wandering around, lost in No-Man’s-Land. Course, Father never thinks twice. He loves horses, all horses, so he’s got to fetch him in, hasn’t he? Quick as a twick he’s up over the top and running.
‘Trouble is, there’s a German chap doing just the very same thing. So the two of them met, right out there in the middle, both armies looking on. They tossed for it, honest they did. They tossed for the horse, and Father won. And…you guessed it, when they got that horse back and cleaned him down, he had the four white socks, he had the white cross on his forehead, and he was bay. He was Joey. Takes some believing, I know. But it’s true enough, I’m telling you.
‘And that weren’t the end of it, not by a long chalk. When the war was over, the army decided to sell off all the old warhorses for meat. That’s right, they were going to kill them. Kill the lot of them. They were going to kill Joey. After all he’d been through, all he’d done, they were going to have him slaughtered for meat. So Father did the only thing he could. He bought Joey back off the army with his own money, all the pay he’d saved up, and brought him home safe and sound at the end of the war. ‘They had banners and bunting and flags up all over the village. Hatherleigh Silver Band too, just for him. I seen the photograph. Everyone was there, whole parish, shouting and cheering: “Welcome home Corporal! Welcome home Joey!” Always called him Corporal. Everyone did.
‘But once the celebrations were over, Father went straight back to work just like before the war – ploughing, reaping, milking, shepherding – and of course he had his Joey with him. Everyone said he was so fond of that horse he’d never marry. Not room enough in his heart, they said. They were wrong, weren’t they? Else I wouldn’t hardly be here, would I?
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