Jase murmured to the others as they went out into the moonlit rose garden.
24
Etta stayed with Mrs Wilkinson all night, stroking her, praying, watching, worrying, telling her about the lovely life that awaited her if she pulled through.
‘I’ll never let anyone be unkind to you again.’
Despite her fears, Etta felt a strange peace and happiness, remembering her Pony Club days with Snowy, thrilled that she had something to love again. Woody, arriving with a loaf of bread to make toast and a jar of honey, found them both asleep in the wood shavings.
Mrs Wilkinson even accepted a piece of toast.
Later in the morning of Christmas Eve, Jase’s friend Charlie Radcliffe, the most admired local vet, turned up to examine her. The snow and bitter cold had taken its toll. By daylight they could see that her iron-grey coat was brown and crusty from mal-nutrition. She was still too weak to stand or walk on her own but she was eating and drinking.
‘Well done. You’ve saved her life,’ Charlie told Etta. ‘She certainly wouldn’t have survived another night outside. But there’s a long road ahead. Whatever got entangled with her legs has given her an infection,’ he added as he dressed and bandaged her sores. ‘Someone’s been laying about her with a shovel and Jase was right, they certainly tried to hide her identity. She’s had a microchip gouged out.’
Etta’s voice broke. ‘Someone’s done perfectly dreadful things to her.’
‘We’d better report it to the RSPCA or the ILPH,’ said Charlie. ‘They could winch her and get her on a drip in a veterinary hospital.’
‘Oh please don’t.’ Etta was almost hysterical. ‘They’ll take her away.’
‘Well, she’ll die because all her internal organs will get crushed if we don’t get her up off the ground. If she’s too weak to stand, we’ll have to winch her.’ Charlie looked up at the ceiling. ‘We could hang a sling from those beams.’
Charlie, who was wearing a bow tie, check shirt and horn-rimmed spectacles, had crinkly dark hair, pugnacious features and the belligerent, exasperated air of a pathologist in a television whodunnit, but he had the gentlest hands. After they had slung Mrs Wilkinson up he gave her a massive shot of antibiotics.
‘Keep tubing her, she ought to take in at least four gallons a day. And keep her off any new hay or concentrates, they might give her colic.’
Etta ran home and collected her wireless and some leg warmers she’d been intending to chuck out. Now she taped them to Mrs Wilkinson’s bandaged legs with Elastoplast, wrapping them in baking foil to make her even warmer.
She also dragged one of Valent’s leather chairs back into the office and settled into it, to be on a level to stroke a hanging Mrs Wilkinson, who gradually relaxed, twitching her ears in time to the carols from King’s College, Cambridge.
At moments the filly’s eye would glaze, her whole body shudder and shrink into itself. Thinking she was losing her, Etta would sing, ‘Don’t give up now, little donkey, Bethlehem’s in sight,’ in a quavering treble, because the song always made her cry.
She must have dropped off because she was suddenly roused by church bells rollicking out across the frozen air. Pocock, the Tower Captain, was on great form ringing for Midnight Mass.
Poor Niall. Etta had promised to go, but hoped the congregation would be swollen by families home for the holiday. At least she was appropriately spending Christmas night in a stable.
‘I’m sorry I’m not in church, God and Niall,’ prayed Etta, ‘but please save this sweet horse. Happy Christmas, Mrs Wilkinson,’ she added, kissing her on her pink nose.
25
After three days, Mrs Wilkinson gave the first whicker of delight, when Etta returned from stocking up at the village shop. After six days, she was able to stand for a second, come off the sling, had normal droppings and had perked up no end. Etta started feeding her boiled barley and linseed bought by Jase from the local feed merchant, two-thirds water to one-third of barley with a little jug of linseed. Etta boiled it overnight in a big pan on the stove in the bungalow. Mrs Wilkinson found this delicious and very comforting on a cold winter’s morning and was soon licking her bucket clean.
Etta also mixed in a small amount of sugar beet for slow-release energy: four smallish feeds at 7am, 12pm, 5pm and 10pm every day. Seeing Mrs Wilkinson respond, Etta was utterly captivated and during the evenings read Walter Scott from the bookshelf out