by K. M. Peyton
‘Oh, shut up,’ said Ruth. She wanted to buy Mr. Lacey’s house so badly that she could not bear Ted to joke about it. Her father wanted to buy it, too, and her mother, not at all enthusiastic, at least agreed that it could be made into something habitable. But their own house was sold and in six weeks they were going to have to move out, and Mr. Lacey’s only daughter could not make up her mind whether to accept Mr. Hollis’s offer or not. Ruth prayed for her every night, prayed for the woman’s addled mind to clear, for her to agree to sell it. If it had not been for the Hunter Trials coming so close, so that they now filled her mind largely to the exclusion of everything else, she did not think she could have stood the suspense for so long. Mr. Lacey’s place was paradise, and Ruth felt as if she were standing at the gates, looking in, and Mr. Lacey’s daughter was fumbling in her large untidy handbag for the key. For weeks and weeks she had been fumbling. Ruth had gone thin again, and edgy, and her father said, ‘It doesn’t matter that much, Ruth,’ as he had once said about buying a pony, but this time he did not say it with any great conviction, because he, too, wanted to buy Mr. Lacey’s cottage almost as much as Ruth. ‘You really could do things with a place like that,’ he would say, standing dreamily in front of the fire, jingling his money in his pocket. ‘You’ll need to, believe me,’ Mrs. Hollis would say, rather sharply. ‘I’ll sweep it up for you,’ Elizabeth told her. ‘It only wants dusting. It’s a nice house.’
Ted, looking for another motor bike to buy with his insurance money from the accident, had earmarked one of the sheds for a workshop. He was back at work again, and happy. Ruth had hoped that even if they didn’t get Mr. Lacey’s house they might have stayed where they were now that Ted was working again, but her parents were not going back on their decision to move.
‘We must get a cheaper place,’ Mr. Hollis said firmly. ‘I’m not changing my mind.’
He did not like his work very much, Ruth knew, so she supposed it must be a poor life for him to work without joy merely to pay for necessities like a roof and food, and with no money left over for having a bit of fun. Sometimes in the summer he would walk down to the river to watch the sailing, and come back very quiet, and rather short-tempered. Ruth knew he would like a boat, although he never said so. Even a holiday, which they had not had now for five years.
But Ruth, when she got to thinking about it too much, had only to turn her mind to the Brierley Hunter Trials to know what real apprehension was. The days were drawing inexorably nearer. If she had thought — as she had thought last year — that she had no chance at all of getting Fly-by-Night round the course, she would not have bothered; she would have admitted her failure. But she knew now — thanks to the McNair schooling grounds — that he had a chance. He was not hopeless. If he was in the right mood he would go like Woodlark herself. Peter no longer had to give him a lead. Anyone else but herself, Ruth thought, would be looking forward to the date with a pleasurable anticipation, but she could only face it with near panic. But she was going.
‘Will you be going?’ she had asked Peter at school.
‘Oh, I might. When is it?’ Peter said, very off hand. Ruth told him the date and he said, ‘If there’s nothing else to do I might.’
When Ruth rode out with Pearl, Fly-by-Night could give the Arab mare a lead over the gap into the stubble field. Pearl, unwilling to accede that Fly-by-Night had improved, said, ‘It’s Milly being off colour, with this stiff leg of hers.’
‘Haven’t you got the vet yet?’ Ruth asked her.
Pearl shook her head, but looked rather chastened. ‘I will,’ she said.
Two days later she came round to Ruth’s on her bicycle and said, ‘What do you think? Mr. Richards came round today to look at Milly, and he said she’s got navicular. Apparently it’s incurable, so Daddy’s buying me a new pony.’
Ruth looked at Pearl in astonishment.
‘But what will you do with Milly?’
Pearl shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She’s useless, according to Mr. Richards. He said it never gets better, and the pony stumbles a lot and is unsafe to ride. So Daddy says I can have a new one!’ She was obviously far more excited about the new pony than concerned about the fate of Milky Way. Ruth looked at her coldly.
‘Will you keep Milky Way?’
‘Mr. Richards says we should breed a foal from her. But we shall want the stable for the new pony. I don’t know what we’ll do.’
‘A foal . . .?’ Ruth’s eyes opened wide at this entrancing idea. ‘You won’t sell her? You can’t sell her! Oh, it would be lovely to breed a foal!’
‘Yes, but I want something to ride, don’t I?’
At school the next day Ruth reported to Peter. ‘What is navicular anyway?’ she asked him. ‘Is it as bad as she makes out?’
‘Yes, it gets gradually worse with age, so a horse with navicular disease isn’t really any good. It’s always liable to go lame. It’s a sort of inflammation of one of the bones in the foot. My father wouldn’t touch a horse if he thought it had navicular.’
‘I wonder what they’ll do?’ Ruth mused.
‘They could sell her to someone for breeding. She’d still be quite valuable — that’s the big advantage with mares, when something like that crops up.’
Ruth drifted through the next lesson in a dream, choosing a sire worthy of Milky Way, seeing the mare grazing peacefully under summer trees with her Arab foal. Her head was full of dreams: of Fly-by-Night winning the Hunter Trials, of her father buying Mr. Lacey’s house . . . ‘Ruth Hollis, stop biting your nails,’ the teacher said acidly.
There was a fortnight to go to the date for Brierley . . . a week. Ruth started to worry about getting there, because it was a long way to hack, all on the roads. Her mother was worried about moving, because they had nowhere, as yet, to move to at the end of the month. ‘You must give that woman an ultimatum,’ she said to her husband. ‘We can’t wait for her to make up her mind for ever.’ ‘All right,’ said Mr. Hollis. Ted was completely involved in buying a new motor bike, going round looking at machines with Ron every evening. Pearl’s father was driving all over the countryside looking at expensive ponies for Pearl.
‘What a mess it is all at once,’ Ruth thought again. ‘So many things going on, everything so untidy . . .’ But just then, in her mind, only the Saturday of the Hunter Trials mattered. All the other things could wait until afterwards. Triumph or disaster would happen on Saturday, and all the other things would sort themselves out, too, shortly afterwards . . . triumph or disaster. ‘One thing at a time,’ Ruth thought.
On the Thursday Peter said to her at school, quite casually, ‘We’re taking Woodlark to Brierley on Saturday. We’ll pick you up if you like. It’s not out of the way.’
‘Fly-by-Night, you mean? In the horse-box?’ Ruth wanted to get it quite right.
‘Yes. We’ll take the big one.’
‘Thank you. That would be a terrific help.’ Ruth spoke calmly, but the offer was such a relief that she could quite easily have embraced Peter on the spot.
‘By the way,’ Peter grinned suddenly, ‘Father-of-Pearl called yesterday, to see if we had any animals suitable for his dear daughter.’
‘Oh, and did you?’
‘They fancied — wait for it — get ready to laugh — you’ll never guess —’
‘Woodlark?’
‘Right first time!’ Peter was grinning. ‘That’s why we’re taking her to Brierley, as Father-of-Pearl wants to see what she’ll do. Of course, she’ll go round like a bomb, so we’re not worried. Father tried to tell Father-of-Pearl what an absolute beast she was, but he kept saying, “My girl’s a splendid little rider. She can handle anything.” So after a bit Father piped down. And Pearl was doing her uppity act, treating Father like a shop assistant, so he came in hopping mad and said, “Let them buy her, and good luck to ’em.” It was a real laugh. I enjoyed every minute of it.’
Ruth could not help smiling, picturing Peter taking it all in with his non-expression on his face, not sa
ying anything.
‘If she rides Woodlark like she rides Milky Way, she’ll get bucked off in double-quick time, splendid little rider and all,’ Peter said.
Ruth knew that Woodlark was a pony who would stick up for herself; she was as bold, and crafty, as Milky Way was sweet and kind. Ruth had no wish that Pearl should come to a bad end, but she hoped more that Milky Way would be made happy.
‘Everyone will be at Brierley on Saturday,’ she thought, without enthusiasm. Besides Pearl’s family, her own mother and father had said they would like to come and see her ‘jump round’, and Ted and Ron had said they would ‘drop in’. None of this comforted Ruth at all. Now it was so close she wished desperately that it was over.
On Friday night she cleaned her tack, and groomed Fly-by-Night in the field. The weather was dry and sharp, the evening sky pink and ploughed and calm. Fly-by-Night now stood tied up without protesting, but he still did not stand in the resigned way that Ruth so desired; he still fidgeted and gnawed the post, or tried to graze. But he did not bite her any more, and he never kicked. His feet were shapely, newly-shod (at McNair’s, as before), and his winter coat had thinned, and shone when the mud had been removed. ‘You’re not bad, for forty pounds,’ Ruth said to him, and he looked at her, four-square, cocky, his little white crescent shining in the dusk. To Ruth, he looked so marvellous she felt a lump come into the throat.
That night she felt that she never slept at all, although she supposed afterwards that she must have done, on and off. She got up feeling sick, and thought how blissful it would be if she didn’t have to go. ‘Talk about a glutton for punishment!’ Ted remarked. ‘What time does the tumbril start rolling?’ Ruth tried to laugh, but it was impossible.
She knew that her attitude was ridiculous, but it made no difference.
She went out and groomed Fly-by-Night again, getting the mud off his feet as best she could. The day was damp and grey, fairly warm, but not very exciting. Somewhere there was a sun that suggested it might come through later. But it had not rained again, and the ground was fairly dry. ‘Thank goodness,’ Ruth thought, ‘I am going with the McNairs!’ The thought of setting out alone made her shiver. She fed Fly-by-Night and let him loose again, and went indoors and changed into Pearl’s jodphurs, and the jodphur boots and grown-out-of black jacket that Peter had lent her for the occasion. She had her own hat, shabby but serviceable, and a white school blouse and a rather frayed Pony Club tie — also Peter’s. She pulled her hair back with a rubber band, and looked at herself in the mirror, and thought she looked like someone at the Horse of the Year Show. ‘Hope we jump like it,’ she said to her reflection, and smiled and held out her hands for the silver trophy, like a photograph in Horse and Hound. But there would be no silver trophy for her, however well Fly-by-Night did, because she was in the same class as Peter. It was a wild dream indeed that made her think of rosettes, but, of course, dreams will rise to anything. When she went downstairs everyone remarked how smart she looked.
‘Do you want to take your sandwiches with you? Or shall we bring them in the car?’ her mother asked.
‘Oh, you bring them,’ Ruth said, not interested in food.
‘Tumbril’s coming up the road now,’ Ted said, from the kitchen door. Ruth gave a little shriek and hurried out to catch Fly-by-Night.
Mr. McNair came in for a cup of coffee, and Peter and Ruth boxed Fly-by-Night, with Woodlark rolling a wild white eye at him over the top of the partition, and all the neighbours peering. Peter, too, looked strangely smart in a black jacket and tie; the decorum of his garb after jeans and polo-necked jerseys with holes in the elbows, emphasized the essential seriousness of the day, and Ruth felt a little more hollow inside. ‘I feel dreadful,’ she said bleakly.
Peter said, ‘You’re mad! About a potty thing like this? We wouldn’t have bothered if Woodlark hadn’t got to be shown off.’
‘What if she does what she did last year?’
‘Last year she was scarcely broken in! Green as grass. It was daft to try it. That’s when Father was a bit off his rocker, between you and me and the gatepost.’
Mr. McNair, no longer off his rocker, came cheerfully down the garden path and said, ‘Got everything, girl? Saddle and bridle aboard? All set to go?’
Ruth nodded, and squashed into the front of the horse-box between Mr. McNair and Peter. Her parents came out and waved and shouted, ‘See you later!’ and the horse-box rolled away down the concrete road.
‘It’s started,’ Ruth thought, but now she felt calmer and more cheerful. After all, no worse could happen to her than happened to Peter last year, and he didn’t seem to think it mattered at all. He and his father were talking about a knock in the horse-box engine.
For the third time Ruth passed through the gate on the top of Brierley Hill where the Pony Club flag fluttered out on its flag-pole by the gate. They were in plenty of time. The stewards were still trundling about in the Land-Rover and pegging out the collecting-ring.
‘You can go round the course now, before we unbox the ponies,’ Mr. McNair said.
‘Oh, heavens, all that way!’ Peter groaned. ‘I know it.’
‘Don’t be so cocky, young fellow-me-lad,’ said his father. ‘How do you know it isn’t quite different this year?’
Peter groaned again, but climbed down and started plodding off across the field, a white-faced Ruth at his side. Several figures could be seen in the distance, doing the same thing, climbing laboriously over the fixed timber that they all hoped to fly faultlessly an hour or two later. It was downhill from the collecting-ring, to a ditch and fairly low fixed rail in a hedge, then a long gallop up the other side to the top end of the wood.
‘Take him away fast, as if you really mean it,’ Peter said. ‘Because a lot of them refuse the first jump, because they don’t like going away from the others. Once over, you’ve got lots of time to get sorted out, going up the hill. Golly, what a bore, hiking all this way!’
At the top of the hill was a tiger trap into a wide ride through the wood. From this ride there was a detour through a very tangled part of the wood, over a large rotted tree-trunk, and back to the ride.
‘You’ll get your head knocked off here if you don’t duck,’ Peter said.
At the end of the ride there was a tricky jump out which involved jumping up on to a bank, and out over a ditch with a rail fixed over it.
‘Woodlark takes things like this in one if I don’t watch out,’ Peter remarked.
After a long plod round the adjoining fields, where the jumps were all fairly straightforward, the course led back into the wood again, through the gate.
‘I think I’ll get off for this,’ Ruth said.
‘If I get off I’ll never get on again,’ Peter said. Ruth thought the same thing might happen to her, but decided to take the risk. ‘He ought to be getting a bit weary by the time he gets this far. If he gets this far. He might be glad to stand.’
The course-builders had apparently decided to give the bank where Woodlark had fallen a miss this year, for from the gate the course led up a narrow twisting path through the wood to the lip of a different bank which dropped some five feet into a bit of a stream. On the far side, so that the pony had to take off straight out of the stream, a big pile of branches had been thrown across the path to make an obstacle.
‘It’s easier than the other bank,’ Peter said. ‘Not so steep.’
‘Ugh,’ said Ruth.
‘You’ve done worse banks than this at home.’
‘Sometimes I have,’ Ruth said. ‘But sometimes I haven’t.’
Peter grinned. ‘All part of the lovely fun,’ he said.
The course led out of the wood over an easy fence and back to the start on a parallel course to the way out, down the long hill, over the ditch and another rail some fifty feet away from the first jump of the course, and back up to the collecting-ring. By the time they had got to the bottom of the hill again they had caught up with several of the girls doing the course ahead of them.
‘Hullo, McNair. How many red rosettes are you picking up today?’ The girl who spoke was the one with malicious eyes who Ruth always thought of as Cat’s Eyes.
‘More than last year, I hope,’ Peter said shortly.
Cat’s Eyes laughed, jeeringly. ‘Of course, I’d forgotten!’ She remembered now, with obvious glee. ‘Instead of going over the rails and through the gate you went through the rails and over the gate.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
The girl who was walking up the hill with Cat’s Eyes said, ‘You needn’t be so clever, Mercy. The day you get over the first jump will be more memorable than the day Peter doesn’t come in first.’
Ruth thought, ‘Bully for you.’ The girl who spoke was called Jane Withenshawe, and had come second to Peter the year Ruth had first watched. Ruth, noting that Cat’s Eyes was really called Mercy, was amazed at the inaptness of it. As they made their way back to the horse-box she said, ‘Why is that girl so beastly?’
‘Born like it, I suppose,’ Peter said. ‘Jane’s all right. And her pony’s a cracker. Dad sold it to her three years ago.’
Jane’s pony, Ruth remembered, was a bay gelding, very like Woodlark in looks, called Clipper. She remembered Peter asking Jane to pair with him, two years ago, and Jane showing in her face that she had wanted to say yes, but nobly refusing.
By the time they had unboxed the two ponies the class for the youngest children, twelve and under, had started. Ruth’s stomach felt cold again as she fetched Fly-by-Night’s tack and started to saddle him up. There was no sign of her family as yet, for which she was profoundly grateful, but the Pymm Jaguar was parked inside the gate. Mr. McNair went across to intercept them, in response to Peter’s muttered plea.
Peter mounted Woodlark, and waited for Ruth to tighten her girths. Woodlark pivoted impatiently, flexing to her curb, her fine black mane lifting in the breeze. By comparison Fly-by-Night was sturdy, tough and masculine where the mare was all female elegance. Side by side with Peter, Ruth realized for the first time that Fly-by-Night was quite small, and that she had grown quite a lot during the last year. To give him the aids now she had to put her legs back to find his sides. She had an instant’s panic: ‘I am growing out of him!’ but as quickly she thrust the thought from her mind. There would be time, later, to worry about that. But the thought added to her nervousness.