by K. M. Peyton
‘I’ll give the jacket back to Tony. I won’t tell him,’ Sandy said to Glynn. It was the most she could do. ‘But you said – you promise?’
‘I swear to you,’ Glynn said – the old Glynn, blond and bland and shining. His blue eyes were honest as the day.
There was a long silence. Sandy stood up and looked at Ian.
‘We’ll go,’ Ian said. He picked up the jacket.
Josie lifted her head. ‘Will you tell anyone?’
‘No. It’s up to you.’
‘Mum knows,’ Josie said. ‘You can talk to her.’ Her voice was a whisper.
Sandy couldn’t bear it. She blundered out of the door and into the garden, and Ian came after her. He put Tony’s jacket on and pulled his bike out of the hedge. Sandy picked up hers. They walked out and shut the gate and started home along the smooth carriageway. The sun had disappeared, but the sky was still orange over the ridge and the sky above a deep velvet blue. It was a beautiful evening but, deeply disturbed, they couldn’t see it. Sandy, trying to look on the bright side, said eventually, ‘At least it’s wonderful to know – stop guessing. Worrying.’ Pretty awful about who it was though.
‘Apart from Gertie’s savings – well, I suppose pinching things – it’s not all that dreadful.’
‘From your own family it’s pretty dreadful,’ Sandy couldn’t help saying.
‘It’s not violent. Just mean.’
‘Yes. Mean.’
How could he, Sandy wondered? Those treasured saddles. Ian’s bike.
‘We’ll tell Tony that Mum put the jacket in the house, for safety,’ she said.
They pedalled slowly home, not saying any more. The best thing, Sandy thought, was being in accord with Ian – the first time she had felt this for ages. She hadn’t realized how apart they had become. She would have hated to confront Glynn on her own, yet she couldn’t have let it ride, even if Ian hadn’t wanted to know. But he had been solid, dependable. She glanced at him sideways, in the dusk. It was true that he seemed suddenly older. Perhaps he would be all right now, if Gertie went away with Grandpa and their mother stopped getting so uptight. Perhaps everything wasn’t so awful after all. In the great scheme of things, Glynn being light-fingered wasn’t much to make a song and dance about.
She felt a lot better, thinking this. There was a wonderful smell of spring and the first stars were coming out over the sea.
‘There, Gertie, what do you think?’
Sandy opened the door into the living-room of the small cottage. She and Ian between them had papered the walls with a lovely paper – old-fashioned, with daisies all over it. It was their wedding present. Some of the corners were a bit uneven, but the pattern was so fussy the mistakes didn’t show much. It had taken them a whole weekend, Sandy pasting and Ian up the ladder. They hadn’t argued much and had found great satisfaction in the result.
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ Sandy thought it was, anyway.
‘Oh, my word, yes!’
Gertie stood there smiling. After all these weeks of sitting doing nothing, she had walked down the drive and up the lane to her cottage like a Trojan, as if her strength had been conserved. The boiler in the kitchen had been lit for a week and the place was inviting and homely, scrubbed and polished, the curtains all washed, the fire laid in the grate. They had never dreamed at Drakesend that it was really going to happen, but with the first spring sunshine Gertie had stirred out of hibernation.
‘It’ll be good to come home, dearie. So pretty you’ve made it! If your mother hadn’t needed me, I’d have been back long ago. But I didn’t want her to think I was ungrateful.’
Sandy gawped. Gertie went round touching all her furniture, putting her ornaments in the right position, smoothing the cushions.
‘Very nice. Very nice indeed.’
‘Do you want to stay? We’ve filled the pantry. It only needs bread and veg and things – we’ve thought of everything. Lots of tins and that. It’s all ready. I can go and get bread now if you like.’
‘Tomorrow, dear. I’ll come tomorrow.’
Would she? They walked home together. Gertie had a stick, but did not falter. She was smiling. When they got back to the farm she said, ‘I’ll go and pack my things,’ and went upstairs.
‘I’m not sure if I believe this,’ Mary Fielding said to Sandy.
‘She said she only stayed because you needed her.’
‘Oh!’
Sandy grinned.
Mary said, ‘It’s dreadful, how selfish we all are. How badly we’ve behaved over Gertie. I’m the worst.’
‘You did everything for her!’
‘But I resented it all the time! Everything that wasn’t her fault – Ian being so bloody-minded, the worry over Glynn and Josie – I snapped at her. I took it out on Gertie.’
‘Oh, Mum, she was pretty annoying! Never helping or anything. Hogging the television. Don’t be daft!’
‘It’s been a bad time, I suppose – Glynn . . . awful. All coming together.’
‘It’s all right now, surely? Josie says it’s all right.’
‘Josie’s a great one for dreams! But she’s strong. With luck she’ll make him see sense. We told her to wait when she fell in love, but no – she knew it all, didn’t she? Glynn wants everything too easy – the idea of a job, eight to five, always frightened him to death. But now – now he must buckle down.’
‘Oh, Mum! He will! Josie will make him!’
‘Yes. She’s strong. Let’s hope so.’
‘You’ve got the wedding to fix next!’
None of them quite knew what to think about the wedding, whether it was touching or potty or a big mistake. Gertie had been married before but she had no children. There was no-one, really, to suffer any repercussions whether it turned out well or badly. It was to be at Easter, and just about everybody in the county over the age of seventy was expecting an invitation. Grandpa was selling the family heirlooms to pay for it: a gold pocketwatch, his first wife’s pearl necklace, and an old picture of a horse lying down in a field, by George Morland. Sandy rather liked the horse, which had hung in the old study ever since she could remember, but no doubt the wedding would give more pleasure. The picture turned out to be quite valuable.
‘Quite a few thousand, would you believe!’
They all scrubbed round to see if there was anything else they might have overlooked, but no . . . only the furniture, which they used. It was antique and no doubt valuable, but it belonged there. It had always been there.
‘No shortcuts! We’ve just got to work for our dosh,’ Mary said with a sigh.
With Gertie and Grandpa going and all that work about to evaporate, she had arranged to use her spare time to make quiches for a local pub. She was a good cook and was quite excited about her new venture.
‘Perhaps Josie can come in too, and make some extra cash. Keep Glynn out of mischief.’
‘Will he be OK now? You’ve talked to him?’
‘They want a tractor driver up at Endway and he could do that – your father’s spoken to them and they say they’ll give him a trial. So that might work out.’
At last, Sandy gave Duncan his penknife back. She told him where she had found it and how it had worried her, and Duncan said, ‘Aye, it worried me too. I called on Gertie that night, to fix a washer for her on the kitchen tap, and afterwards I couldn’t find my knife. I thought maybe it was in her kitchen – evidence, like. I told the police I’d been there, naturally, so if they found it—’ He shrugged, grinned. ‘So you had it all the time. You didn’t say?’
Sandy felt herself going scarlet with shame. ‘I didn’t want it to be you! I daren’t ask! That was what was so horrid about it all the time. Sometimes I thought it was Ian.’
Duncan laughed. He was one of the best, self-effacing and kind, and had not split on Glynn, even when he knew.
‘It was hard,’ he said, ‘but I reckoned it was a family thing. I saw him in the tackroom the time the money went missing. It wasn’t for me to sa
y.’ The others in the yard were too busy thinking of team-chasing to remember the burglaries. The insurance had paid out on the saddles, and only Leo knew about the night of Ian’s bike. She never asked Sandy any more about who it might have been, and Sandy suspected she did not ask on purpose, because she guessed. Leo was very bright.
The nights were warm, the grass was growing fast, and at last the horses could be turned out. Sandy loved the coming of summer and the easing of her workload. Tony, at last, was beginning to do-it-himself, coming over early to exercise and groom and feed so that his horse would be fit to compete, and it was obvious that he was doing it not just for his great-aunt’s money, but because the competition bug had bitten. He was besotted by galloping across country. King of the Fireworks had made a man of him, just as his old hunting auntie had intended.
As for the rest of the team, it was in a state of ferment most of the time – Leo deciding she never wanted to do it again, then changing her mind; Julia declaring she hated competing; and Polly wondering if she might get killed if she persisted. To Sandy, without a horse, it was academic. Life was like that, she had discovered – highs and lows. One took a chance or settled for the safe and the dull, or perhaps had no choice.
She took to going down to talk to Queen Moon, who came to the gate when she saw her coming. Queen Moon now had her summer coat and she had put on weight. Her ribs barely showed. Sandy was hoping that the mare was transferring her rapport with Jonas to herself; certainly she looked for her coming and showed her affection. Leo said she ought to ride her, but Sandy felt there was no way she could do that without Jonas’s permission. She thought that Leo was hoping Queen Moon could take the Empress’s place in the Drakesend Dodderers. Leo had professed herself too scared to ever ride again, but no-one was taking her seriously, except Sandy. Sandy did not dare comment, the idea of riding Queen Moon in the team too glorious to contemplate. If only Jonas would come back! There was no word of him, and even his father, Tony reported, had no idea of his whereabouts.
‘Suppose he never comes back?’ Leo asked. ‘What will you do then?’
‘Die,’ said Sandy, to fob her off.
She stood in her bedroom window and pressed her nose against the pane. It seemed an age since she had watched for ‘the wild boy’ on the silver horse, galloping along the sea-wall in the moonlight. How romantic it had seemed then – and still did, in spite of the fact that the wild boy was now probably working on an oil-rig or gutting fish on a trawler. Sandy didn’t think she would see him again.
Afterwards, she sometimes wondered if she dreamed what happened next. Everything to do with Jonas was a dream, after all, except the party. It was hard to know fact from fiction, save that Queen Moon grazed in her field down by the river.
There was a figure on the sea-wall, not galloping but walking. A fast, easy, gypsy pace, coming from the direction of Brankhead. Queen Moon put her head up and whinnied. Even through the glass, Sandy heard the whinny. The boy ran towards her and the mare trotted down the field to meet him.
‘He’s come to take her away!’
Sandy let out a loud, despairing sob. She stood frozen, trembling with love and despair.
The boy put his arms round the mare’s neck, but did not vault on as Sandy was expecting. He gave her a hug, then stood back as if to examine her, but she turned round, nuzzling him. He hugged her again. He gave her titbits from his pockets. He put his hand on her neck and walked to the gate with her. But he did not go through. He sat on the gate and seemed to be talking to her.
Afterwards, Sandy supposed that if she had run fast enough she would have caught him before he went. But she seemed to be made of lead, fastened to the floor. The tears rolled down her cheeks. He went away the way he had come, and when the mare couldn’t follow him because of the fence, she stood and whinnied, looking after him. Jonas didn’t turn round. He ran. Perhaps he was crying too?
Sandy waited. A long time after Jonas disappeared, Queen Moon started to graze again. Occasionally, she lifted her head and looked towards Brankhead, but soon she was grazing steadily, her shadow long in the moonlight. Sandy went to bed.
In the morning, she wondered if it had happened. Queen Moon was undisturbed. The sun shone. But Sandy felt abandoned, sick. She got dressed and went down the field to see Queen Moon as she always did. The mare looked up and started to walk towards her. Sandy leaned over the gate and saw a piece of paper wedged in the latch. She pulled it out and smoothed it open. In scrawled pencil it said, ‘I would like you to have Queen Moon for your own. You are the only person. See you. J.’
Sandy had to be alone. She went over the sea-wall and sat there, looking at the river in the early-morning sunshine until she had got her brain back in order. Then she floated home. She had missed the school bus.
‘Where on earth have you been?’ her mother asked.
‘By the river.’
‘Why are you smiling like that? You look as if you’ve found the end of the rainbow.’
It must have been infectious. Her mother was smiling too.
‘Yes,’ said Sandy.
THE END
About the Author
Kathleen Peyton’s first book was published while she was still at school and since then she has written over thirty novels. She is probably best known for Flambards which, with its sequels The Edge of the Cloud and Flambards in Summer, was made into a 13-part serial by Yorkshire Television in 1979. The Edge of the Cloud won the Library Association’s Carnegie Medal in 1969 and the Flambards trilogy won the Guardian Award in 1970. More recently, BBC TV televised her best-selling title Who Sir? Me Sir?
In addition to The Boy Who Wasn’t There, Kathleen Peyton is the author of several other titles published by Transworld: Darkling (for young adult readers), Poor Badger (for younger readers) and, coming shortly in Doubleday hardcover, The Swallow Tale. She lives in Essex.
Also available by K.M. Peyton
THE BOY WHO WASN’T THERE
For younger readers
POOR BADGER
For older readers
DARKLING
THE WILD BOY AND QUEEN MOON
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 15716 7
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2012
Copyright © K. M. Peyton, 2012
Illustrations copyright © Jon Riley, 2012
Cover Illustration copyright © Ann Carley, 2012
First Published in Great Britain
Corgi Childrens 2012
The right of K. M. Peyton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
RANDOM HOUSE CHILDRENS PUBLISHERS UK
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
www.randomhousechildrens.co.uk
www.totallyrandombooks.co.uk
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.