‘Dinner’s at seven and the water will be hot at six. I expect you’ll like to wash and change after you’ve been with the horses.’ Miss Warrender left her to unpack.
Dinner, it turned out, was prepared by Miss Warrender herself, as was everything else in the house. Beatrice discerned that she’d fallen on hard times and was probably grateful to have a lodger.
Today, Captain Browning, fortyish, pale and flabby, had given her several forms to sign before handing her into the care of an ageing NCO with a rough countryman’s face. This was Sergeant Dally, the head groom.
Sergeant Dally had greeted her without meeting her eye. As she walked with him across the stableyard he remarked, ‘We don’t want women here. They upset everything.’ Then he left her with this local girl, Tessa Hill, one of only two other females at the depot.
‘Don’t let ‘im get to you,’ Tessa whispered, seeing Beatrice’s stricken face. ‘Once the men see we do the work same as them, they treat us all right,’ she said. ‘Oh, and you have not to mind the language.’
Tessa helped Beatrice pick out the smallest pair of overalls from the store, though these were still baggy on her, and was now showing her the half-dozen horses and ponies she was being allocated to feed, muck out and groom every day. ‘And that’s before the exercising and the training, I’m warning you,’ she said. ‘Come on, we’d better get started.’
Beatrice loved the job at once, though it was hard physical work and she got very tired. Sometimes, waking in the mornings, her legs and hips felt weak and tingly a result of the polio, she supposed, and she’d lie there willing herself to get up. That was the only time she allowed her thoughts to crowd in.
The work did help keep her mind off things, in particular the awful dragging anxiety about Rafe. It was always there, in the background, but most of the time she was too busy or too tired to think about it. Sometimes she asked herself why she’d come, and it gradually dawned on her that she’d been running away, just running, without knowing where she was running to. It wasn’t a bad place that she’d found herself. She didn’t know how long she’d stay here, but for the moment it suited her.
The majority of the horses were being trained to pull heavy wagons. Tessa didn’t know where they would end up; maybe in terrain where trucks couldn’t go, it was supposed, or where there was no petrol. Some would become police horses, and some of the more aristocratic steeds would be used for ceremonial duties.
It was pointless, Beatrice quickly discovered, to become too attached to her animals, for the easier ones like Stanley, the big hunter, would stay for as little as a few weeks, before being loaded into one of the trailers and taken off heavens knew where. It would have to be enough for her to know that she was giving them a short period of kindness before some possibly dark fate overtook them.
There were one or two other men who shared Sergeant Dally’s world view, but most of them did accept the women without question. Sturdy Tessa was a farmer’s daughter of nineteen with a furze-bush of fair hair, and well used to sharing heavy work with men. The third woman, Sarah, was a different kind altogether: dark-haired and mysterious. Probably in her late twenties, tremendously voluptuous, there was a sad, brooding air about her. She was pleasant to Tessa and Beatrice, but didn’t brook confidences. While over their lunchtime sandwich and cups of strong sweet tea Tessa talked enthusiastically about Ted, her childhood sweetheart, who wrote postcards to her from an RAF camp in Kent where he was ground crew, Sarah said nothing, but stared into the distance and turned a gold ring she wore on the fourth finger of her right hand. There was one thing everyone valued about Sarah: while the girls were all devoted to the animals in their care, Sarah seemed to have an uncanny ability with them, quieting even the most nervous and badly treated. It was as though she understood them. Even Bert never tried to bite Sarah.
They were out in all weathers. The horses had to be exercised and Beatrice quickly became familiar with the local network of country roads and bridleways. Then there was the training.
The problem, inevitably, was Bert. One morning, a fortnight after she arrived, Sergeant Dally decided Bert should be tried on a wagon for the first time. Beatrice was nervous, but she didn’t dare show it. She muzzled him, and by holding him on a short rein and firmly coaxing, managed to wheel him round and back him into his place next to Stanley. After a couple of false starts, she led them successfully about the field and was pleased with his progress. Stanley was clearly a calming influence.
The watching Sergeant wasn’t satisfied, though, and it wasn’t long before he strode across and commanded, ‘See how they go with you riding upfront.’