Child from Home by John Wright Page A

old Spaven took it on errands but she was enjoying an extended break from her duties after her eleven-month pregnancy.
    The harnesses that hung on the walls of the stable had an acrid smell of leather and linseed oil, and Spaven talked of horsey things while stroking and gentling the whickering mare as she stamped her forefoot and snorted. He tried to explain things to us but, on receiving the inevitable ‘Why?’ in response, he became so exasperated that he gave up. The horses were huge beasts to us but he lifted us up to help with the grooming using the body or the dandy brush. He loved his ‘’osses’ and looked on them as close friends and I loved the feel of the mare’s warm, sweet breath as I held out a few pellets in my cupped palm. I liked nuzzling up against her and stroking the long soft hair of her mane and the top of her long muzzle.
    We would carry in small bundles of wheat or barley straw when the soiled bedding needed changing, and we were sometimes given the job of stirring the bucket of bran mash and mixing in the thick gooey molasses that old Spaven had prepared. In the winter he warmed it up for them. Twice a week he took a handful of linseed, put it in a pan and boiled it up, and when a crust formed on top of the oil he let it cool before adding bran and oats. He said this helped to give their coats a lovely glossy sheen and he warned us never to stand directly behind their back legs as they might suddenly take fright and kick out. On the insides of their legs we couldn’t help but notice a network of thick veins that were so pronounced that we thought they might burst at any moment.
    Tommy Gibson brought the tall, round milk churns to the kitchen of Sutherland Lodge every morning in his little van. On those warm, late spring days the twittering and trilling of a variety of small birds could be heard as our walks took us through green woodland glades. The tick-tick of the tiny jenny wren and the black-hooded bullfinch issued from the depths of leafy thickets and the low cooing of collared doves could be heard. The midges danced and bit in the damp umbrella of shade beneath the deciduous trees. As the sun shone through the branches, dappling the ground, it lit up the leaves making them translucent so that from below we could see every vein. I thought, ‘if they have veins then they must have hearts’, and as Mam used to say, ‘You can see the hand of God in every living thing.’
    Sometimes we saw buff-coloured hen pheasants, with their tiny chicks making weak, whistling cries of alarm as they scuttled for cover. Occasionally the clattering flight of a wood pigeon would startle us as it flew up, shattering the peace of the forest. The noise brought to mind that of a roller blind being released and we would catch a glimpse of white as the bird flew off. We nibbled on the tender, pale green leaves of hawthorn and called it bread and cheese, as it was said to taste like that.
    Even in that idyllic setting things were not always of a pleasing nature. We often had to pass a gaggle of orange-footed geese (the gander was called a ‘steg’ in these parts). I had been terrified of them ever since one had hissed and chased after me, honking loudly with his neck fully outstretched and his cackling concubines also joining in. As I ran like billy-oh, blinded by floods of tears, he had torn my trousers with his vicious, stabbing beak and bruised my arm with his powerful wings. That incident established a life-long wariness and distrust of them. Kitty said, ‘They make good guard dogs because they honk whenever anyone approaches.’ All the same, I liked to see the fluffy, white-downed goslings as they crossed the paths near the Forestry bungalows. At other times we glimpsed them on the wide grassy firebreaks between the trees.
    Another frightening experience occurred when we were confronted by a tall cross-eyed tramp, who occasionally turned up pushing an old pram