by K. M. Peyton
‘Hey, good timing! Coffee’s up.’ He shrugged round and bawled out of the open door, ‘Jonas, coffee!’ He dumped the basket at Sandy’s feet. ‘Hi, Sandy. How’s things? Saw your nag tied up out there. It’s the in thing round here, horse transport. We’ll have to put up a hitching rail.’
He picked up Selina and flung her in the air. She screamed with delight. The quiet room seemed suddenly to have burst into life with Glynn’s arrival. The outdoor sunlight came in with him, along with the smell of fresh wood and damp earth. His fair hair stuck up like a halo round his head. His presence was very positive, and Sandy thought how lucky Josie was to have such a rock of a man to be her partner. Laughing, they looked incredibly handsome together, like an advertisement photo. Selina wriggled in the crook of Glynn’s arm and Josie took her, hitching her over her shoulder so that the baby’s gold hair glowed against her own blue-black tumble.
Sandy was impressed by seeing everything that home life should be, as compared to what it suddenly wasn’t any more at Drakesend. No wonder she got confused. She remembered the endless tirades from her father, condemning Glynn – impossible to think that all that heartache had resolved into this picture of domestic bliss.
While she was being dazzled by this scene, Jonas Brown slipped hesitantly through the door. Sandy saw him and felt her face blazing scarlet, out of control. She wanted to die. She crouched over Glynn’s log-basket, making a pretence of putting wood on the embers of the fire.
‘Sandy, you know Jonas, don’t you? Jonas, Sandy.’ Josie made a sketchy introduction. ‘You’ll stay and have a coffee, Jonas? Here, sit down.’
She pulled out a chair at the table. Glynn took Selina back and Josie got out more cups and saucers. They were her own, covered with red-and-blue parrots.
‘Shortbread?’
She shoved across a plateful.
‘Sandy’s got to go to a party at the Speerwells’, Glynn. I said you’d take her.’
‘No!’ Sandy squeaked. ‘Don’t be daft!’
‘What’s wrong with me?’ Glynn grinned. ‘Not handsome enough?’
‘Too old,’ said Josie. ‘Besides, I’d be jealous. Hey, you could take her, Jonas! How about that?’
Sandy wanted to die. How could Josie be so crass? Had she really forgotten, already, what it felt like to be such a quivering bundle of hopes and confusions, despairs and self-loathing and wild ambition, that seemed to characterize this state of adolescent love? Or had she been so confident in her pursuit of men that she had never experienced her insides dying, her brain disintegrating?
‘They have great parties, the Speerwells. The food is out of this world. You’d take her, wouldn’t you, Jonas?’
What else could he say? Sandy heard him mumble that yes, he wouldn’t mind. Have a shortbread? Thanks. How many sugars in your coffee? Just one thanks. Sandy sat by the stove with her head drooping, her heart thumping like a clapped-out diesel engine. She could have killed Josie.
‘I must go,’ she mumbled.
‘You haven’t drunk your coffee,’ Josie pointed out amiably. ‘Here, I made a chocolate cake. I forgot. It needs eating.’
She was a fabulous cook. No-one could depart in the face of such a cake, thick with chocolate icing. Jonas, thin as a reed, ate as if he had never met chocolate cake in his life.
‘Who cooks at yours, Jonas?’ Josie asked him. ‘Your father?’
‘We go to the chippy. Or get pies from the shop.’
‘No wonder you look half-starved.’
In the ensuing banter Sandy began to recover, slipping up to the table to sit opposite Jonas. She would never get this opportunity again. Catch her going to Speerwell’s party after this! She kept stealing quick glances at Jonas. In close-up his gypsy looks were confirmed: his skin brown, his hair black and curling. He had dark brown eyes with long lashes and a quick, secret way of looking as if he, too, were not too sure of his ground. He had a quiet, graceful way of moving that spoke of an outdoor life. He would be useful to Glynn, Sandy could see: skilful with an axe, smart with machinery. He probably did not read much and his writing would be slow and laboured. He was magic with horses. Sandy wanted to know so many things, but could not speak.
Jonas ate three pieces of chocolate cake.
‘You’d better not bring him too often, Glynn,’ Josie joked.
Jonas flushed up, and Sandy felt herself glowing in sympathy.
‘He’s worth a chocolate cake. He’s a good worker,’ Glynn said. He made a date with Jonas to collect some more timber from the top wood. Sandy, in passing, recognized that it was her father’s timber that Glynn was taking. Ian had been offered the use of a tractor to do the same job, but had never got round to it, although he was always short of money. Ian was not an outdoor man.
‘I must go – tide to catch,’ Jonas mumbled.
A tide? Sandy went out with him, saying she had to go back. She thought she could ride as far as the sea-wall with him, unless he went off at his usual gallop. Josie came out with them, the baby on her hip.
‘You should come more often,’ Josie said to Sandy.
‘Yes.’ Sandy thought so too. She hadn’t realized what a gruelling life the livery yard had been during the last few months. ‘I’ll have more time in the summer. When it’s light.’
She untied George and clambered into the saddle while Jonas whistled Queen Moon and vaulted on to her back. But instead of galloping away, he held back and waited for Sandy.
‘She enjoys a bite of grass,’ he said.
‘Doesn’t she go out at all?’
‘No. I got nowhere.’
‘You could bring her to ours. Our field.’
‘Then how do I ride? Walk over?’ He laughed. It was about five miles.
‘Where did you get her from? She’s so lovely.’
‘Newmarket. She was too small to race – they threw her out. Lad I know, he told me. He loved her, didn’t want her to go to the knacker’s. I got her for carcass money. He paid most of it, to save her.’
Sandy digested this. She thought it was only girls who were like that. Soft.
‘I might have to go away for a while. If I do, she can come in your field?’
‘Yes. Oh yes.’
The two horses walked side by side down towards the sea-wall. It was like a summer’s day, the sky cloudless. Sandy felt her heart rising up in her like a balloon, lifting her up. She thought she might float away. At the bottom, he turned left, she turned right. He never said anything about taking her to the party.
Sandy wanted her ride to last for ever. She rode on the bank, slowly, watching the bright sun on the water. The tide was high, lipping at the wall, and the long-billed curlews flew over making their haunting, rippling cries. She could smell the sea and the warming earth and all her troubles dissolved like her breath on the soft air. He spoke to me, she thought.
Just before she got to the track up to Drakesend, two fishing smacks came down the river on the tide, going out to sea. Normally, she never gave the boats a second glance, but this time, taking in everything with her new, seeing eyes, she saw a boy on the foredeck, flaking down a mooring warp. It was Jonas. At the ship’s helm was hunched a gypsy-looking man with fierce eyes and a scowl. He was shouting at Jonas, but the words were indistinguishable above the thump of the diesel engine.
Sandy pulled up on top of the wall, watching . . . so that’s what he did! He was a fisherman. Everything slotted into place: his funny hours for riding, to fit in with the tides, his air of belonging to another place – a being apart. He worked the smack with his father.
As she watched, he straightened up, finishing his task. He looked up and saw her, and lifted a hand to wave.
SANDY TOLD LEO what had happened, although she hadn’t intended to.
‘So he’s taking you to the party!’ Leo was deeply impressed.
‘No, of course not! It was Josie’s daft remark, but he never made a date or anything. I expect he’d die rather than take me.’
‘Who are you going
with then?’
‘Nobody. You.’
Leo looked gloomy. She had asked Ian, and Ian had said he was going with Julia. ‘Blooming cheek. She asked him!’
‘He’s always stuck up for her rather,’ Sandy remarked, remembering how Ian had gone on the day she had made her terrible remark. At least Leo had gone off Julia now, which helped.
‘It doesn’t matter. We can go together.’
‘I thought Julia was in love with Tony.’
‘Yes, but Tony fancies Polly. Haven’t you noticed?’
‘She’s miles older than him.’
‘It’s all this schooling together. Every night. I never dreamed he’d get so keen.’
Polly’s strong will had prevailed upon Tony Speerwell and his riding had noticeably improved. They rode out together every night looking for cross-country jumps and King of the Fireworks had started to have faith in his rider as Tony learned to keep in tune with him. Tony was athletic and not unintelligent, and the thought of earning his auntie’s money kept him wonderfully on his toes. Also, as his confidence grew, he enjoyed it.
‘Who wouldn’t, with a horse like that?’ as Leo remarked.
Leo rode Empress of China more and more. Sandy wanted to make the fourth member of the team and rode the Empress as often as she could, but by the time she had done all the odd jobs round the yard, there wasn’t much opportunity. Faithful would jump anything for Julia and had an assured place in the team. Polly was already looking for schedules to find their first competition. Sandy reconciled herself, as always, to being a spectator. She hadn’t seen Jonas again, since her visit to Josie. That had all been a dream, too. Sometimes she wondered if that day had really happened. She wanted to ask Josie, but there was never any time to see her. Josie came over to see her mother with the baby, but mostly when Sandy was at school. Sandy went back into her gloom, dreading the party.
‘What are you going to wear?’ Leo asked her.
‘What am I going to wear?’ Sandy wept at her mother.
‘Parties are supposed to be happy things,’ her mother pointed out. ‘Josie goes to parties in those red dungarees. I thought it didn’t matter these days.’
Sandy wondered about borrowing the dungarees, but Josie was stick-thin. She didn’t have a pot like Sandy. Sandy breathed in and stood upright, and found she looked much better. Short skirts were in. Sandy had strong legs like tree-trunks. Standing up and breathing in didn’t make them look any better.
Julia had masses of clothes.
‘Come to mine and have a look through,’ she said.
Sandy had never been to Julia’s, so accepted her invitation out of curiosity. Julia’s mother had come to terms with her daughter’s preferred way of life and now paid Faithful’s livery bill, and when Sandy arrived in her kitchen she was friendly in her sergeant-majorish way: ‘Sit here. Take those muddy shoes off. Tea or coffee?’
Mrs Marsden had found that driving Nick and Petra hard used up all her energies and fortunately they seemed to enjoy it, so Julia was let off the hook.
‘Lucky for me,’ Julia remarked. She opened the wardrobe doors in her bedroom and revealed miles of shelving and hanging space, all apparently packed with pristine clothes. Sandy could get all her clothes in one chest of drawers without even squashing them. She didn’t know where to start looking.
‘What are you going to wear?’
‘This.’ Julia pulled out a tiny crimson dress. It was mini and had a plain round neck and short sleeves. Sandy knew that it would look stunning on little waif-like Julia, who had no bulges.
‘I want something more – more swamping.’
‘Dark,’ said Julia. ‘Fat people look better in dark colours.’
In her usual stark way she was being helpful. She pulled out some silk shirts in purple and navy and forest-green.
‘These look OK loose, with jeans.’
They were miles better than anything Sandy had. They looked expensive and slithered over her arms in a luxurious way.
‘Look in the long mirror.’ Julia’s bedroom had its own bathroom, and a whole wall of mirror. Sandy looked and realized that Julia was right: fat people did look better in dark colours. When she straightened up and held her breath, she looked quite reasonable. She chose the purple shirt. None of Julia’s trousers fitted her.
‘That’ll look fine with jeans,’ Julia said.
She wouldn’t stand out, but she wouldn’t be an object of scorn. Sandy was satisfied with that.
Julia’s room was ablaze with rosettes. There were framed photographs of her show-jumping, and one of her receiving a rosette from Princess Anne. The bedroom had cream carpet all over and a pink flounced bed. Unlike Sandy’s, it was as warm as the kitchen below.
‘It’s funny, what you did,’ Sandy said. ‘Giving up all this.’ She waved her arm towards the rosettes. ‘Coming to us.’
Out of the window she could see a stable-yard all painted and perfect, everything in its place and of the best, with no trails of straw or forgotten buckets, no uncoiled hose or thrown-down head-collars. It was a far cry from the tatty yard at Drakesend which, try as she might, Sandy could never get looking any better than ‘homely’.
‘Oh, it’s much nicer at yours,’ Julia said as if there could be no argument. ‘My ma knows I’d never come back here.’
‘Why not?’
‘She can’t help it. If I came back she’d want me to take Faithful to shows all the time. Faithful’ll jump anything now, with me. I could get her right to the top. But she doesn’t want to do that, does she? It’s stupid. I just like messing about, like we do. Ride how you feel like. I’m really lucky my ma doesn’t go on about it all the time – I thought she would. She did for a bit, but she’s given up now.’
Sandy realized that even the sergeant-major could see she had met her match in her own daughter. Little, pretty Julia was hard as stone, just like her own mother. She did what she wanted to do.
‘It’s lucky she’s got Nick and Petra to work on. They love it. If she hadn’t got them—’ Julia shrugged. ‘It might be different. They all leave me alone now.’
Sandy had always thought Julia was hard to get to know, but realized now that perhaps her family thought the same. She was unnervingly her own person, not bothering what anyone thought about her. And while everyone about her was striving to make their horses competitive, she went her own way, jumping only what was in her path, not bothered with Polly’s rails, coffins and combinations. Polly did not press her, for they all knew that Julia only had to point Faithful at them for the little mare to jump.
For a hopeful, fleeting moment Sandy thought . . . ‘You’re not keen on being in Polly’s team-chase, then?’
‘Not really. But they need me, if Tony’s got to win his auntie’s money.’
No false modesty there. Anyway, George would never get round – what was she dreaming of? In her heart, Sandy knew that Leo would get chosen for the ride on Empress of China. She was a better rider and had more drive
Julia was not the sort to offer words of encouragement or comfort. Sandy felt cast down – about loving Jonas, about being fat and not looking anything much, about growing out of George and not having another pony, about her missing livery money – but Julia did not sense her mood. They talked for a bit about show-jumping, and then Sandy went home with the shirt in a plastic bag.
She tried it on with her best jeans and Gertie said, ‘You look pregnant in that thing.’
‘Don’t be silly, Gertie. Everyone wears loose-fitting clothes today,’ Mary Fielding said sharply. ‘It’s lovely, Sandy.’
‘I had a dress once all covered in beads. It hung down just like that. I did the Charleston in it. With Tubby Malone. He asked me to marry him.’
‘He married Edith Edmonds – her with the big mole,’ Grandpa said.
‘Aye, and she were in love with Percy who helped the blacksmith, but Tubby were a good catch, weren’t he? I turned him down because ’e ’ad smelly feet. They were terrible. Did you know that? H
e ’ad a nice home and a good job but I couldn’t live with a man with those feet.’
‘He could ’ave kept ’is boots on.’ Grandpa started his wheezing laugh and then his coughing, and Mary had to fetch him a glass of water. Sandy ran out of the room, wanting to scream. She ran up to her bedroom, which was cold and had only a moth-eaten rug by the bed and no bathroom adjoining, and threw the purple shirt on the bed. She dreaded the party now worse than ever.
Mary Fielding drove them to the party in the car – Sandy and Ian, Julia and Leo. Afterwards, she was going out with Bill to see some friends, and the old couple would have to make their own cocoa and get themselves to bed.
‘Gertie won’t, bet you,’ Ian said. ‘You’ve spoilt her something rotten, Mum. She’ll wait till you get back.’
‘She’d better not! She’s perfectly capable.’
‘We all know that, but you—’
‘Oh, don’t tell me what I’ve done wrong, please! Do you think I don’t know?’
Mary changed gear with a jerk, and they all exchanged glances in the back. It was March and the evening was only just going dark. The sky was deep blue and flecked with stars and there was a smell of everything starting, damp and fresh, and the hint of the sea beyond the walls and the marshes. Sandy loved evenings like this, and would sometimes stand down by the ponies’ gate just smelling the air. She had reconciled herself to the party being nothing special, only the food, and was facing it with a curious sort of stoicism. She just had to get through it and try and enjoy herself. They had clubbed together, including Polly, and bought Tony a new numnah for King of the Fireworks.
When they got to Brankhead Hall, they piled out at the gate. There was a long gravel drive leading to the house, with a fine avenue of lime trees, and several cars passed them as they walked up. Brankhead Hall was in the stately league, a large early-Victorian, stucco-fronted pile with a fine porch. The gravel drive swept round majestically, edged by elegant lawns, and the house was framed by huge old trees. The cars were disappearing round the side to some hidden parking, decanting their passengers at the brightly lit door. The passengers seemed older and smarter than the party from Drakesend, who hesitated before the porch. Through the open door they could see waitresses standing with trays of drinks.