by K. M. Peyton
The first night they were to sleep there, Sandy and Leo went to bed early. It was eight o’clock and just going dark. Sandy put the light on.
‘He won’t come till everyone’s asleep.’
‘You’re not expecting him tonight, are you? That would be too easy. It’ll probably take weeks, long after we’ve got fed up with sleeping up here. Or he might never come.’
But there was something both exciting and cosy about their new situation. It was fun to be sleeping together, to be on their own without anyone else. They wriggled down into their sleeping bags. The evening breezes whistled through the old loft and starlings cluttered and chattered in the eaves.
‘I hope there’s no rats,’ Leonie said.
‘No. The cats keep them away.’
‘Tony’s party was great. Pity it finished with the saddles being nicked.’
‘At least it can’t have been Jonas.’
‘You didn’t think he’d come, did you?’
‘No. I was sure he wouldn’t. But he only came because Josie told him to. I could have died.’
‘He wouldn’t have come if he hadn’t wanted to, daftie. He enjoyed it. He’s quite civilized really.’
‘The ride home was—’ Sandy had already tried to describe it to Leo – tried and failed. She thought she would never forget that evening till her dying day. She hadn’t seen Jonas since. It was no good pretending it had been the start of a great love affair.
They gossiped, knowing it was going to be hard to get to sleep the first night. It was strange, when they stopped talking: the shuffling and munching and sighing of the horses drifted up from the yard, and the muttering and chuckling of the Brent geese on the marshes carried so clearly on the still night air that they could have been in the yard too.
‘I suppose we ought to put the light out.’
Sandy lay there thinking about it, and in that instant they both heard quite clearly the sound of the key turning in the tackroom padlock below. Sandy heard Leo give a sort of gulp. They looked at each other. Sandy felt the hairs rising up on the back of her neck. She lay petrified, not daring to move. Footsteps sounded on the floor below.
Sandy knew she should apply her eye to the hole in the floor, but she was too frightened to make a move. The two campbeds creaked alarmingly every time they moved. Whoever it was must know they were there, because of the light – who was going to discover whom?
The footsteps paused. There was an agonizing silence. Then the footsteps approached the ladder and the two girls heard someone coming up.
Afterwards, comparing notes, they both agreed they were so frightened they nearly passed out. They heard the groping hand looking for the trapdoor edge, then the trapdoor started to lift. Sandy heard Leo give a sort of squeak.
The trapdoor rose up and a head followed it.
‘Good heavens!’
It was Duncan.
‘I thought you’d left the light on. I didn’t know you were still here.’
No-one knew who was the most surprised. Duncan now looked thoroughly embarrassed.
‘I was just on my way home. Sorry if I frightened you.’
‘We’re doing a burglar watch.’
‘Yeah, I can guess. I used the spare key. It’s very easy for this burglar.’
‘We’re setting a trap. We want to see who it is.’
‘You’ll be sorry.’
Sandy, propped up on one elbow, said quickly, ‘What do you mean?’
Duncan, in the poor light, looked even more embarrassed. ‘I’ll be getting along. I’m sorry if I spoilt it.’
‘No,’ said Leo. ‘You didn’t. It’s good practice. I didn’t know how terrified I’d feel. We were really stupid to leave the light on. We didn’t think he’d come till much later.’
‘You’re probably right.’
‘Do you know who it is?’ Sandy asked.
There was a long silence. Duncan, framed in the trapdoor, looked very solid and dependable, Sandy thought – how could she ever have suspected him? He never skimped on his work, sitting up with sick cows, coming now to put the light off when he could easily have ignored it. She still had his penknife in her anorak pocket.
‘Do you know?’ she repeated.
Duncan shrugged. He had shoulders like a rugger player, and a wide, mild face, not easily excited. He always needed a haircut and quite often a shave.
‘Sometimes it’s best not to know things.’
‘What does that mean?’ Leo asked sharply.
‘It hurts.’
‘Who is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
They thought he was lying. His face was expressionless.
‘I’d best get along. I’ll lock the padlock and put the key back. I’m sorry if I scared you.’
When he had gone, they put the light out and lay there going over his remarks. They were both very disturbed. Sandy was agonized.
Leo said, ‘Perhaps it was a cover for himself, to appear to be so helpful and cast the blame away from himself.’
‘Oh, no. Not Duncan.’ Sandy hadn’t told even Leo about the penknife. ‘I wish that hadn’t happened.’
‘I was so terrified. If the burglar does come, we’ll be useless. We’ll just die of fright.’
‘Everything squeaks so up here. We can’t even move to look through the holes. I suppose if he comes by car, we could look out before he gets in.’
It wasn’t a good start. Sandy told her mother – not her father – what Duncan had said, about being sorry if they knew who it was. Mary Fielding did not reply, but her saggy look came back and she looked about sixty.
‘Do you know?’ Sandy shouted out, the agony feeling coming back.
Her mother shouted back at her, ‘Nobody knows! You just think, without any proof. That’s what’s so horrible about it!’
‘Who do you think then?’
‘Do you think I would tell you, you stupid girl?’
Her mother was so upset that Sandy was scared. All her clever plans suddenly seemed as useless as thistledown drifting on the breeze.
POLLY ENTERED THEIR team in the competition under the name ‘Drakesend Dodderers’. It was apparently the fashion to use facetious names. It suggested, in true British style, that you did not expect to win. Tony wanted Drakesend Devils, and Ian suggested Drakesend Dumbos. Polly thought she had chosen a happy medium.
‘Tony on King of the Fireworks, me on Charlie’s Flying, Julia on Faithful, and Leo on Empress of China.’
Sandy accepted the blow as it fell. Although Polly hadn’t mentioned it before, Sandy had known Leo would get the ride on Arthur’s horse. Polly gave her an anxious glance and Sandy returned a brave smile. Inside, she felt hurt and demolished. ‘It’s my yard,’ she thought indignantly to herself. ‘If it wasn’t for me, no-one would be here at all. There wouldn’t be a team.’ Then she thought that that ought to be a comfort, ought to make her feel good and important. It didn’t.
Nothing made her feel good any more. Jonas seemed to have disappeared. Mary Fielding was a nervous wreck and always in a bad temper. She had cleaned up Gertie’s cottage for Gertie to return to as soon as the weather settled into summer, and now Grandpa said Gertie mustn’t leave: Drakesend was his house, and he would say who lived there. As this was true, the argument was very delicate. Josie came round with the baby, and Sandy came in on the tail-end of an argument between Josie and her mother and was in time to see Josie depart in tears. She could not believe her eyes.
‘Don’t you say a word!’ her mother hissed at her. ‘I’ve had it up to here. I don’t want to hear your opinion, or anyone else’s!’
Sandy, hurt, retired to her bedroom in the loft. It seemed a friendly place all of a sudden. They had made it more cosy now, with books and shelves and a carpet, and they both slept soundly there, almost having forgotten about the burglar. The team-chase was taking precedence in their thoughts, even Sandy’s, although she wasn’t riding.
‘I wish Polly had chosen you,’ Leo said gloomily
. ‘I’m frightened to death. You know what a hold the Empress can take once she’s tizzed up.’
‘You can still ride better than Tony though. And he’s not frightened.’
‘Well, he’s still as conceited as they come, isn’t he? He doesn’t swank about like he used to, but he still has a pretty high opinion of himself.’
‘You could call it confidence.’
‘You could.’ Leo was doubtful.
‘He’s the one most likely to fall off.’
‘But he’s the one who’s got to get round.’
‘Only three have to get round. It’s the first three home.’
‘I know. But for his auntie’s money, he’s got to finish.’
‘Whatever was in his auntie’s mind, he’s much nicer since he started coming here. It’s worked, hasn’t it? Do you remember the night he first came, in the lorry? How bossy he was?’
‘Yes. He was revolting.’ Leo considered for a moment and said, ‘Julia’s nicer, too. It must be your influence, Sandy.’
Was Leo being nice, to make up? Sandy wasn’t sure.
Polly hadn’t asked Julia if she wanted to be in the team: she just took it for granted.
‘Do we, Faithful?’ Julia asked her. She was sitting in the straw in the corner of the box, watching Faithful feed. Faithful’s box was her home-from-home, like the loft for Sandy and Leo. She spent a lot of time in there with Faithful, not just mucking out or grooming, but sitting. Nobody commented on it, taking it for granted. Everybody, if questioned, would have said Julia was a bit odd, a loner, but nobody disliked her. If Julia had been asked what she was doing, sitting in Faithful’s box, she would have found it hard to answer. Most of the time she was thinking how nice it was, not being at a show, not loading up or unloading or trying not to forget the bandages, the schedule, the spare girth, the water bucket, the plaiting things. All her life until now she had been chivvied unmercifully. At Drakesend, nobody asked anything of her. Until now.
Faithful was an unusually affectionate pony. Whether she was grateful for Julia after her treatment by her former owners, or whether it was just in her nature to show affection, Julia did not know. But Julia remembered being struck, the first time she had seen her, by the look of misery quite transparent in her demeanour. It was unusual for a horse to show these human emotions quite so clearly: they could look dejected or lively, in general, but rarely ‘spoke’ of their condition quite so patently as Faithful did. Even in the middle of her feed, Faithful would take time off to give Julia a loving shove. Julia couldn’t imagine Big Gun from Minnesota lifting his greedy nose for one instant under the circumstances. This unstinting love gave Julia the best feeling in her life. She felt she had an anchor at Drakesend – her faithful (how well-named!) mare who would never deviate in her loving trust.
‘I don’t think we want to do team-chasing, do we?’ Julia said. ‘You might get hurt. The only thing is – they will need us.’
Faithful was only an inch over fourteen hands, and would be markedly smaller than her companions in the team, which meant she would be going flat out to keep up. She was very fit; it wouldn’t damage her, but the sport was much rougher than show-jumping and injury came easily. Julia thought she would tell Polly to try and find somebody else – not this first time, because it was too late to change things, but later, when Tony had got going. The competition bug still eluded Julia. She had no desire to win rosettes.
‘She’s a funny girl,’ they all said.
But weren’t they all?
When it happened, Sandy and Leo were totally unprepared. It was a Friday night and in the morning they were all going over to have a look at the team-chase course. The competition was the following weekend. According to Polly, it was ‘a doddle’.
‘But none of us have jumped together over more than a couple of ditches down on the marshes, or over those two fences Tony built up in the wood,’ Leo moaned. ‘Then we stop. What will it be like over a mile and a half and sixteen fences? They’ll get so excited – and pull—’
Sandy was feeling more relieved day by day that it was going to be Leo riding and not herself. Or so she told herself. But sometimes, underneath her encouraging remarks to Leo, there was a big blank of disappointment. She was still the fat dogsbody whom no-one considered for any of the plums of this life: the one who would muck out when the others had gone for a ride, who fetched the furthest horse from the grazing, who mended the torn New Zealand rug when it was unwearable – even when it wasn’t her horse’s. They all knew she would.
Jonas had disappeared from the planet. Being deeply in love with a disappeared person made life no easier.
She lay in her campbed listening to Leo getting herself in a state, and wondered where she had gone wrong. Leo liked excitement in her life; she enjoyed frightening herself in bed at night. Sandy hadn’t the heart to discourage her. She could have said, ‘The Empress is very old. She’ll probably drop dead after the second fence.’ But she didn’t. She put the light out and pretended to go to sleep. Leo went on talking to herself for some time, then fell asleep too.
What time it was when they woke up, they had no idea. It was pitch dark. They woke up simultaneously, disturbed by the unfamiliar sound. It was a car at the end of the drive.
‘Oh, lawks!’ Leo whispered.
They both lay staring at the ceiling. Sandy willed the noise not to have happened. All was now silence.
‘Did you hear it?’ Leo squawked.
‘Yes. Of course.’
He wouldn’t come right up, of course, or he would be heard from the farmhouse. He would stop down there, turning the car round to make a getaway towards the village.
Had it been their imagination?
They lay without talking for what seemed like an hour.
‘Are we imagining things?’ Leo whispered.
‘No. Shut up.’
There was no moon, no stars. It was hard to make out even the rafters above.
Faintly, a soft clunk came from the yard. King of the Fireworks whickered. He had seen someone, Sandy knew. It was a quite friendly, curious, surprised whicker. People didn’t come to feed them in the middle of the night, but he was optimistic.
Then, from below, they heard the familiar click of the key turning in the lock and the soft squeak of the tackroom door opening.
Neither of the girls had realized how frightened they would be when this eagerly awaited incident happened. Sandy could hear her heart thumping so loudly she thought it must echo through the whole building. She felt insufferably breathless. Leo lay like a dead body beside her, rigid. They had neither of them worked out what they were going to do. Look through the hole in the floor . . . it seemed completely mad now, the dark so all-embracing, the floor squeaky, and the flesh so utterly unwilling. Sandy bit her lip till she could taste blood. She remembered vividly Duncan’s head appearing in the trapdoor. Even more vividly she remembered their exchange of words: ‘We’re setting a trap. We want to see who it is,’ and his reply: ‘You’ll be sorry.’ He had covered it up later, but that was what he said. Why?
Was it Ian? He had several friends with cars. Duncan himself, being clever? Sandy couldn’t bear it.
She sat up in bed and reached for the light switch. She jumped out and screamed, ‘Go away! Go away!’
There was a crash from below and the sound of feet, running.
Leo sat up and screamed, ‘You idiot! You idiot!’
Sandy burst into tears.
Leo got up and flung open the trap, switching on her torch. The door below was open and Ian’s bike lay half in and half out, its back wheel spinning. The sound of running footsteps floated, echoing for a moment, from under the archway. Leo turned furiously and shone her torch out into the lane.
She screamed, ‘We saw you! We saw you! We know who it is!’
‘You didn’t!’ Sandy shouted.
‘No, of course not – thanks to you, you idiot, you fool, you nutcase! Why? After all the time we’ve put in? Are you mad?’
; Leo was livid with rage. Her eyes glittered in the torchlight. ‘He’s gone. I never saw him. How could I?’
They heard the car engine starting up and its rapid retreat in the direction of the village.
Sandy sat up, hugging her knees. Ian wouldn’t steal his own bike, surely? Oh, she was glad! She didn’t care a toss for Leo’s fury. It wasn’t anyone they knew. It couldn’t be.
‘I didn’t want to know.’
Leo flumped down on her bed. She was trembling.
‘You’re so stupid!’ But her voice lacked conviction now. ‘Why do you say that? Why are you so frightened of who it might be?’
‘Of course I am! Of course I am!’
It was all right for Leo – she wasn’t involved. It wasn’t her farm, her family all falling apart, her mother acting so strangely, her brother so incalculable. Leo didn’t know about Duncan’s penknife. Sandy felt herself so mixed-up, so weary of this horrible thing hanging over them.
Leo said softly, ‘However bad it is, it would be better out in the open. Better solved. Quicker, then, to get right again.’
She was right of course. Sandy started to cry.
‘It must be someone in the know,’ Leo went on inexorably, ‘because he knows about the key, and that there’s something here worth stealing.’
‘What shall we do?’
She couldn’t bear to tell her parents, to upset them all over again. It had been bad enough last time. If she shut her eyes, would it go away? Would the burglar give up, being so frightened?
Leo said, ‘It’s up to you.’
If she thought she had troubles before this happened, Sandy realized, she had been living in cloud-cuckoo land. Now she had real problems. They both lay on their beds with the light on, trying to get over the shock.
In the end they went downstairs and put the bike back in its place, replaced the key in its hiding-place, shut the door and went back to bed.