Fly-by-night

by K. M. Peyton

  When Pearl had vanished, Ruth, ashamed now of her anger, pulled Fly-by-Night’s head up and walked back down the field. He went easily, unconcerned, and Ruth could sit and look at the hedges full of wild rose hips and pretend that she was out to enjoy the landscape. At the bottom of the field, where it was flat, she decided to do some schooling, and walked Fly-by-Night round in several big circles. Apart from a tendency to go out in the bottom corner, heading for home, he did these quite well, but when she attempted to do them at a trot he ran out each time at the home corner, and it was only by a lot of hauling and kicking that she was able to get him back on course again. It was her own inadequacy as much as the pony’s that distressed her: into her mind sprang a picture of Peter McNair trotting Fly-by-Night in compass-drawn circles, the pony flexed to the bit, his hind legs well under him. The picture had ‘GOOD’ written under it. The fact that it was entirely imaginary caused her to weep a little more as she walked back down the lane.

  When she got home she gave Fly-by-Night a net of her precious hay and went indoors with her saddle and bridle, which she kept in her bedroom. Elizabeth was sitting at the kitchen table, drawing.

  ‘Was he good?’ she asked.

  ‘No, not very.’

  ‘At least,’ Elizabeth said, ‘he will eat the bridle now.’

  And as Ruth went upstairs it was a comfort to her to remember that when Elizabeth first came, six months ago, Fly-by-Night would not even be bridled, let alone ridden in circles. ‘Perhaps,’ she thought, ‘I expect too much. I am making progress, slowly.’ And the more she remembered what Fly-by-Night wouldn’t do, six months ago, the more her spirits revived.

  But progress, during the winter, was slow. By the time Ruth got home from school it was dark, and she could only ride at week-ends. During the Christmas holidays the ground was covered with snow, and then frozen slush, and Fly-by-Night remained in his field, tugging at his hay-net. Ruth had to break the ice on the old cistern three times a day. Morosely she watched him out of the windows. Even with the paper-round money, she was only just able to afford to keep him in feed, and only for his sake would she have turned out of bed at six o’clock every morning and cycled, shivering, to the paper-shop for her bag of papers. She was very conscious that money was tight, for her mother was anxious about Christmas, and their presents were dull and necessary clothes, offered with apologies. Her father looked worried, and did the football pools every week, and said, ‘This house will be the ruin of me.’ To Ruth, the brightest moment of the holidays came two days after Christmas when she met Pearl, when she delivered their papers, and Pearl said, ‘I’ve got a new pair of jodhpurs. Do you want my old ones? I was going to throw them away.’

  The jodhpurs were beautiful, with buckskin inside the knees, and Ruth found that riding was infinitely more comfortable. She was full of gratitude, and Pearl asked her to tea once or twice, but Ruth never enjoyed life inside ‘The Place’ very much, for Pearl’s parents were very peculiar, to her eyes, using sanguinary adjectives every time they spoke and quite often shouting at each other with a viciousness that made Ruth wish she could crawl under the carpet. At other times they were very affable and called everyone ‘darling’. Their house was furnished with very plushy carpets and satin sofas that engulfed one like great soft clouds. Ruth could never make up her mind whether she liked it or not. Its air of lush comfort overwhelmed her, but a puritan streak in her was repelled by it. On the other hand, she did not like her own house very much, with its cold, functional character. She decided that she must be hard to please, until she remembered Mr. Lacey’s place, and its haphazard take-it-or-leave-it air, droopy ceilings, and pear trees looking into the bedroom windows. ‘That is how I like my places,’ she thought.

  Three days before she was due to go back to school she went out to feed Fly-by-Night and found him standing in a corner of the field with his nose stuck in the hedge and his tail clamped hard down on his hind quarters. He did not look up as she approached, which was unusual, for he usually galloped towards her whenever she went near the fence.

  ‘What’s the matter, my beautiful?’

  Fly-by-Night did not shift. Ruth felt a coldness creep over her. She recognized Fly-by-Night’s appearance as that described as ‘tucked-up’ in all the books; he had little hollows under his hip-bones and looked thin. And as she looked at him she saw that he was shivering. His legs shook, and from his back little spirals of steam rose up in the air.

  Her coldness turned to panic. She stood rooted, appalled.

  ‘Fly! What’s wrong with you?’

  But Fly rolled a miserable eye in her direction and put back his ears. His hind legs started to shake so that all his flanks quivered.

  Ruth was alone; her father and Ted were at work, and her mother had taken Elizabeth to the dentist. She was terrified, for this ailing Fly-by-Night was a stranger to her, all his cockiness extinguished. The shaking, and the wisps of steam horrified her. She ran back indoors, and hunted feverishly through her books under the chapters headed ‘Ailments of the Horse’. These chapters, never much studied until now, laid out in horrid detail the symptoms of worms, thrush, strangles, colic . . . She turned from one heading to another, and found that nearly every paragraph ended, ‘Send for the veterinary surgeon immediately.’ They nearly all said, too, ‘Lead the horse into a box well filled with fresh straw and cover the loins with a rug, or sack.’ Ruth, having no box, no straw, no rug, and no sack, pulled the blanket off her bed and took it outside. She threw it over Fly-by-Night’s steaming back, fastened it at the front with her school-house brooch and round his belly with two of Ted’s belts buckled together. Then, pulling her bicycle out of the garage, she cycled frantically round to ‘The Place’ to tell Pearl what had happened.

  Pearl said, ‘Well, get the vet. That’s what they’re for. We had one for Milly when she cut her leg on some wire.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Richards, he was called. He’s the best round here.’

  Ruth hesitated. Doctors were free, but she did not know whether vets had a version of the National Health Service for the animal world. Never having contributed anything towards it, she rather doubted whether they did. Pearl, as if divining her thoughts, said, ‘You don’t have to pay when he comes. He sends a bill later.’ This decided Ruth.

  ‘Can I use your telephone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A secretary took her message. She gave her name and address and the secretary said, ‘Mr. Richards will be over as soon as he can.’

  Ruth hurried home, and spent the afternoon watching Fly-by-Night, who did not move, and rushing out into the front every time she saw a car. The eleventh car pulled up outside the gate. Ruth looked at it, and started shivering herself. The car was brand-new, with wire wheels, the sort Ted and Ron would watch with narrowed eyes, not saying anything. A man got out and said, ‘Horse here?’

  Ruth nodded. The man was immaculately dressed in a tweed suit and smelt of after-shave lotion. He took a pair of gum boots out of the car and Ruth said nervously, ‘He — he’s round the back.’

  ‘Lead on,’ said Mr. Richards.

  Ruth did as she was told, and took Mr. Richards to Fly-by-Night, who laid back his ears and presented his hind quarters, so that Ruth had to hurry back to the house and fetch a halter. Mr. Richards stood waiting, and Ruth had a terrible feeling that he was like a taxi, his fee creeping up while she wasted his time. But when she haltered Fly-by-Night, Mr. Richards just said, ‘These ponies are tough, you know,’ and after a cursory thumping, listening and peering he laughed and said, ‘What’s your mother going to say about the blanket?’

  Ruth thought the question completely beside the point.

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Of course he’s all right.’

  ‘I — I thought —’

  ‘Oh, you women are all the same. Fuss, fuss, fuss,’ said Mr. Richards. ‘A little cold. He won’t die.’

  Ruth felt as if she had been run over by a steamroller. Mr. Richards
drove away and she went back to Fly-by-Night and cried, ‘How was I to know? And he’ll send a bill . . .’ Fly-by-Night shivered, and Ruth hugged him. ‘Oh, Fly, the money!’

  The next day Fly-by-Night was better, but Ruth could think of nothing but the little brown bill that would come through the letter-box one morning, addressed, as likely as not, to her father. Her mother was furious about the blanket. When Ruth told Pearl, she just laughed.

  CHAPTER VII

  PETER TAKES A FALL

  BY THE TIME the Pony Club Trials at Brierley came round again Fly-by-Night, in Ruth’s opinion, was not even fit to take to a Pony Club rally, let alone jump in a Hunter Trials. Ruth longed for the summer, for long evenings, for more riding and — most of all — for more grass. The brown bill from Mr. Richards did not come, but Ruth looked for it every day. Try as she might, she had managed to save no more than five shillings towards paying it, but she thought if she could wait until the grass came through, so that there was no more hay to buy, she would be able to save more. ‘Worry, worry, worry,’ Ron said. But he did not know about Mr. Richards. Nobody knew except Pearl.

  And at school Peter McNair was still an unattainable presence, a quiet boy, lately absent quite a lot. Ruth studied him in assembly, but could see no signs of ill health apart from, once, a black eye. Ruth put the black eye down to Woodlark, but had no way of knowing. She had given up any hope now of ever receiving any advice from Peter McNair, or even of speaking to him, and when she went to the Brierley Hunter Trials she expected — correctly, as it turned out — that he would see her without betraying any sign of recognition.

  Ruth went to the Brierley Hunter Trials determined that next year she would ride in it. And it was a sign of her progress to remember that last year, standing on the same ground, she did not even possess a pony, or even dare to hope that she ever might. However unsatisfactory she might consider her schooling of Fly-by-Night, at least she now had a potential entry. ‘It’s just up to me,’ she said to herself, which was in no way a comfort. But she went to Brierley this time, knowing what she wanted. ‘Just to get round, next year.’ Not even to win.

  It was warmer, this year, the air full of the smell of spring. The little wood was full of catkins, and the stream was swollen, the banks soft and peaty. Ruth walked the course, while the stewards were still pushing in the marker flags and the riders were converging at the gate at the top of the hill. The course was basically the same as the year before, but with variations. This year one jumped the course through the wood in the opposite direction, so that one jumped into it over a rail and down the steep bank, and left it by passing through the gate. Having considered all the difficulties, Ruth went back to the collecting-ring to wait for the start. She felt tight and nervous, thinking of next year. ‘Whatever shall I feel like next year?’ she wondered, and started to shiver.

  The girls’ faces this year were familiar. The girl whom Peter McNair had asked to pair with him was there, and the girl on the lazy grey who had objected to the idea. All the ponies looked competent and unworried; the girls sat and talked as if they were quite unconcerned. The ponies did not kick and go round in circles, nor even try to graze. They just stood. ‘If Fly just stood,’ Ruth thought enviously. It had never occurred to her before that it was something a pony had to learn.

  This year Peter McNair arrived in a modest single trailer driven by his father. The pony they unloaded from it was a bay mare of about fourteen hands, more like a show-pony than a hunter. She had a fine thoroughbred head with a white star, and an airy, floating movement that reminded Ruth of Milky Way. She would not have known who it was if she had not bought a programme, and seen the name Woodlark.

  ‘Woodlark!’ Ruth stared. She remembered vividly the wildness of the bay filly, galloping along the crest of the big field; she had not dreamed that even the McNairs could have tamed such a creature so quickly. The day after she had seen Woodlark she had bought Fly-by-Night. ‘They have had exactly the same time as I have had,’ she thought. And Fly-by-Night would not even trot in a circle!

  She would have been acutely depressed if Peter McNair had mounted and ridden away to sit unconcernedly in the collecting-ring. But her spirits lifted a little when she saw that the McNair magic was not so potent as she had supposed. Peter, in fact, looked unhappy, and seemed to be having a bitter argument with his father. Mr. McNair stood at the mare’s head while Peter saddled her, and his hands were full keeping her still: it was obvious that she was far from composed.

  Ruth heard McNair say, ‘Of course she’ll go round. I haven’t brought her all this way just for the drive.’ His voice was very curt, the sort one would not wish to argue with, and Peter said no more. His head was under the saddle flap as he did up the girths and Ruth could not see his expression. She was fascinated, eavesdropping from a discreet distance.

  When the mare was saddled, Peter mounted. He sat very still in the saddle, not saying anything, his face closed up and showing nothing. His father led the mare for a few paces and then let go, and Peter kept her walking, away from the crowd and the horse-boxes. Ruth thought, ‘From the way the mare goes, it must feel like sitting on a volcano.’ She thought, too, that Woodlark was one pony that would not stand still in the collecting-ring. Peter made no attempt to bring her near any of the other ponies, but kept her out of the way, walking and trotting.

  ‘Perhaps she’s not so different from Fly after all,’ Ruth reflected. ‘Except that she’s got Peter, and Fly’s only got me.’

  She had not attempted to jump Fly-by-Night yet, except over poles on the ground and small ditches, which did not trouble him. Some of the jumps on the trial course looked quite big to her eyes, although very clean and inviting. She thought the nastiest was the jump over the rail and down into the wood, and decided to stand there, in the same place as last year, so that she could see most of the course. A man sat on a camp-stool in the wood, with a score-sheet on his lap. Ruth stood by the hedge and waited for the first pony to come, glad of the warm sun.

  Some of the ponies did fast competent rounds, but many of them were not at all marvellous, and Ruth, as is the way with competitors, felt very cheered. This course was a thing between oneself and one’s pony: half the time one was alone, out in the country, and there were no spectators apart from one’s fellow competitors, who knew what it felt like, and the adults scoring on their camp-stools. ‘I shall get round,’ Ruth said to herself. ‘Oh, I shall do it!’

  Woodlark jumped last in the class for twelve- to fourteen-year-olds, having been kept out of the collecting-ring until it was nearly empty. Ruth recognized her by her gallop: she went up the hill as if on wings, twice as fast as any of the other competitors. Whether Peter had her under control or not Ruth could not tell, until she appeared on the far side of the wood, still galloping, and Ruth assumed she must have cleared the intervening obstacles. Peter was just sitting there, not pulling at her nor seeming — from a distance — in any way alarmed; in fact, as they flew a fence out in the country it looked to Ruth so easy that for a moment she wondered why she was so worried about trying it herself. And why Peter himself had seemed unhappy about the idea. But as the mare circled for home and come at her floating gallop across the field to what Ruth thought of as ‘her’ jump, Ruth began to change her mind.

  The jump into the wood was cramped between trees and the bank down to the stream was poached and steep. Most ponies had slithered down it on their hocks, or gone down in surprised and unseating bounds. It was not an obstacle to take fast, and Peter was pulling Woodlark up in plenty of time. As she came nearer, Ruth could see that, although Peter had her collected, she looked very wild, and anything but an easy ride. Peter was watching the dark hole into the wood, frowning, and Woodlark, held back, was taking great bounds up into the air like a Lipizzaner stallion. Peter eased his hands. The mare plunged forward, fast, and galloped at the rail, but at the last moment she decided she didn’t like the look of it, and stopped.

  Unfortunately she had left it a fraction too
late. Skidding in the mud, she cannoned into the rail and pitched right over it in a spectacular cartwheel. Ruth saw her shoulders drop, her tail fly up in the air. There was the splattering of mud clods and a crashing of branches, then some anguished snorts, a cry of anger, or pain, and a lot more splashing. Ruth ran forward, more by instinct than inclination, but as she got to the splintered rail Woodlark came bounding back up the bank, wild-eyed. She hesitated at the top, quivering, too frightened to jump out, and too frightened to go back. Her reins were over her neck and trailing between her forelegs.

  Ruth knew she ought to try to catch her, and tried a soothing address, but her voice came out anything but soothing. Woodlark, churning about, saw her, swung away — but the man taking scores was coming up the bank behind her. Woodlark, cornered, swung round again and jumped, clean and high.

  ‘Catch her!’ the man bawled at Ruth.

  Ruth made a rugby tackle at Woodlark’s head, and caught a handful of mane. She gripped tight and Woodlark pulled her off her balance. She cried out as Woodlark trod hard on her foot, groped up with her other hand for something better than mane, and fell over as the mare stumbled, treading on her reins. Fortunately, as Ruth fell she caught the vital rein, and held on tight. Woodlark started off with a great bound, but was brought up abruptly. Ruth felt herself dragged across the grass, but somehow managed to get to her feet again, winded and unable to utter a word, soothing or otherwise. But at this moment the man caught up with her and Ruth saw his hairy tweed arm reach over beside her own. Woodlark was captured. Ruth let go, shaken.

  ‘Well done, my dear,’ said the man. ‘It was misguided of me to shout “Catch her”, but I know this mare. We wouldn’t have got our hands on her for a fortnight if once she’d got away.’