“Where then?” I asked.
“We don’t know, do we? Perhaps we can ring the caravan site from the cottage.”
“Some hope,” I said. “Do you know its name? Is it Drover’s End?” I asked.
Daniel didn’t answer.
We were running again and soon we reached the place where we had left Jan Williams; we could see the dent where she had lain. Blimpie ran ahead of us. Then we could see the cottage and shadows lay on it now – the shadows of evening. “We should have remembered the tide,” I said, breaking into a walk, trying to think, trying to make a plan.
“It’s really rather exciting,” announced Daniel, looking suddenly younger than his years. “I never imagined anything like this could happen to us.”
“Nor did I. Let’s stop and think. If we follow the road round, it must come to the caravan site in the end. It’s common sense,” I said, starting to run again.
“Do you think we could ride the horses back? Because if that old woman can ride Groucho bareback and lead the other, they must be quiet,” cried Daniel.
“We’ll have to see,” I said.
As we were passing the house, we decided to stop there and feed the dogs. We found tins of dog food in a cupboard in the kitchen, but it was ages before we found a tin-opener.
“They will have rung the police by now; they’ll be frantic,” said Daniel, alluding to our parents.
We put water in a fruit bowl for the three dogs because we couldn’t find anything else suitable. All the time Blimpie was growling and snarling at the other dogs, jealous and uneasy, wondering when he would be getting his dinner.
“What about the key?” I asked when we had locked the front door again.
“We’ll just have to leave it with the landlord at the pub,” replied Daniel, after a moment’s thought. “Supposing we don’t find the pub?”
“We must find it,” he said.
Dusk had come now. The sky and the sea were almost one. The pub was suitably called The Ancient Mariner. It was quaint and pink, with deep thatch and small lattice windows. We rushed straight into a crowded bar. Heads turned to look at us.
“Can we see the landlord?” asked Daniel. “There’s been an accident.”
Everyone was staring at us by now.
“He’s over there.” A woman perched on a stool pointed to the man behind the bar. He beckoned us to the yard outside. “Can’t hear a thing in there,” he said. “Now, what is it?”
We explained briefly. “And here’s the key,” finished Daniel. “You’ll give it to Jan Williams’s daughter, won’t you – please?”
“She would ride them bareback. I told her time and time again it wasn’t safe. But I might just as well have spoken to that there wall,” said the landlord. “Bareback and in halters. I ask you! Do you ride?”
“Yes, we do,” I answered.
“We have to go now,” said Daniel. “We’re late already, very late.”
“I’ll ring her daughter Samantha right away; she’s a lovely kid, she’ll come,” promised the publican, and then we were running again with a cool wind in our faces smelling of the sea.
“Dad will kill us,” Daniel shouted. “Run. Can’t you run any faster? We can cut across the sand dunes. Look over there, there’s the site!” cried Daniel, pointing towards an ocean of caravans below. We ran on, stumbling over hillocks.
The site was orderly when we reached it. Rows and rows of caravans stood on concrete; there was a bingo hall, a restaurant, even a nightclub; but it was not our camp. We stood and looked at one another and Daniel started to cry, silently like someone who is disappointed beyond words. Then he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“We’ll ask,” I said, looking round for help.
“I don’t want to speak to a murderer,” replied Daniel. “Or a kidnapper. We don’t know anyone here.”
“There’s a car coming,” I cried, dazzled by headlights.
We stood to one side while a voice yelled, “Where have you been? Your mother’s nearly out of her mind with anxiety.”
Blimpie ran to the voice, wagging his tail, and Daniel cried, “It wasn’t our fault, please don’t be angry, Dad, please.”
“Get in,” shouted Dad. “Don’t say another thing, get in. We were about to call the coastguards out. We’ve rung the police already. Where have you been?” he yelled, revving up the engine; then we were leaving the camp with Dad silent and angry at the steering wheel.
“We found someone hurt. Her pelvis was broken,” I said, trying to sound calm, cool and collected. “We couldn’t get away.”
“You could have telephoned us,” he answered, as though we were at home with a telephone in the hall.
“Where to? Don’t be silly, Dad,” I replied.
Mum threw her arms round us when she saw us. “We were afraid you were drowned or murdered, such terrible things happen,” she cried. “We searched the whole beach; the tide was in, we thought you had been washed away. We’ll never leave you again – never!”
A few minutes later we were telling our parents what had really happened, taking it in turns to speak. When we had finished Dad said, “I owe you an apology, don’t I? You were right to do what you did and I’m proud of you.”
“What about the horses?” I asked. “We were supposed to take them back and it’s dark now.”
“I’ll see the site owner. We’ll try to leave them here until tomorrow,” Dad answered.
“We ought to see them now,” said Daniel. “There may be glass about, or wire. We didn’t look.”
“Or a broken gate, or weedkiller,” I cried, suddenly alarmed to think that we had turned them out without following any of the elementary rules of pony management.
We found a torch and Mum came with us, while Dad walked across to the caravan site office. Groucho and the pony were standing under a tree. They looked very fat, as though they had been eating without stopping for hours. After a search we found a trough full of water and two gates, both shut, and the fences were all standing up.
“Okay, now we can sleep soundly,” Mum said.
Dad was waiting by the caravan when we returned. “It’s all right. I’ve telephoned the chap who owns the field and they can stay until the morning.”
It was too late to cook, so Dad bought fish and chips and we ate them in the caravan.
The next day we took the horses back. We led them along the beach and up the windy path and they dragged us with them, eager to be going home. Samantha, Jan Williams’s daughter, had just arrived. She was one of those country-spun people with her hair in a plait, wearing sandals and a long skirt and peasant blouse.
“How can I ever thank you both? You saved my mother’s life,” she said. “The tide could have come up and washed her away. I might never have seen her again but for you.”
“The horses saved her, not us,” I answered. “We found them loose on the beach.”
“How is she?” asked Daniel.
“Comfortable, you know what hospitals are like.” Samantha shrugged her shoulders as we led Groucho and his friend through a five-barred gate and turned them loose. Now there was sunlight everywhere and the smell of the sea.
“I should give you a reward,” said Samantha. “But I don’t know what.”
“Don’t be silly,” replied Daniel. “You can save us one day.”
“Here come Mum and Dad.”
“Coffee. You must all come in for coffee,” cried Samantha, while the three little dogs barked and jumped higher and higher, trying to lick our faces.
Later we went to visit Jan Williams in hospital. She looked like everyone else now, washed clean and in a hospital nightie, but she had one leg suspended from a pulley. She was still drowsy from the anaesthetic so we did not stay long, but she invited us to visit her and now every year we stay with her, in our caravan. Last year we took our ponies with us and rode them along the beach and into the sea. Next year we are competing in the annual Bank Holiday Show there. Jan Williams has asked me to jump Gr
oucho and Daniel is riding the cream-coloured pony in the handy hunter competition; so in a funny way everything seems to have come full circle. We may have missed Stilton Show but we have gained another, even better one.
Mum puts it in a different way: she says that the good you put into life is always repaid in some other way. Either way that particular holiday turned out much better than we expected.
Hamstrung
Christine Pullein-Thompson
“Jo Jo wants to ride. Go for her sake, Jamie, please,” my mother said.
“But have you seen their father? He wears a deerstalker. He’s like something out of The Forty-Nine Steps or Sherlock Holmes,” I cried.
“I want to go,” shrieked my beastly little sister, whose name is Josephine though everyone calls her Jo Jo. “They breed Highland ponies and Flora is about my age.”
“And their mother Morag keeps asking you over,” added my mother. “They” lived in a large old house with turrets at each end.
I won’t tell you their name, nor mine either, for fear of reprisals. I’ll just say that their name was Scottish and ours isn’t, though my mother was raised in the Highlands. We were there for the summer holidays and I was perfectly happy walking Binkie, our Jack Russell terrier, along the side of the lake, which in Scotland is called a loch. But of course my sister is different. At home our house bulges with her friends; they stay all day. They bring packed lunches and erect portable Wendy houses in the garden. In other words they are a pain with a capital P. At home Jo Jo is forever organising parties. A week without a party is a catastrophe for her.
“You can go this afternoon. Get your riding hats. I’ll drive you over,” said my mother, so firmly that I knew it was prearranged.
We found our riding hats and put on riding boots. Jo Jo was laughing and smiling; she always does when she gets her own way.
“I would go with her, but I haven’t been invited,” said my mother apologetically.
I made no reply. I felt too angry to speak. I hate meeting new people. I hate being pushed into things. I hate playing the elder brother.
“Look after Jo Jo, do you hear me? Don’t let her do anything silly,” my mother said.
The driveway to the house where they lived was long, with fields fenced by wire on each side. Hugh, Duncan and Flora were waiting for us by a modern stable block.
“We’ve tacked up the ponies ready for you,” cried Flora, who was small with tousled, dark hair, and rosy cheeks.
Duncan was sturdy, while Hugh resembled his father, being tall with an arrogant tilt to his head.
“You want to ride, don’t you?” Hugh asked as Mother left.
“Yes, of course. Aren’t they lovely. Are they all Highland?” cried my sister, running from pony to pony in a most unhorsemanlike way. “They’re such fantastic colours,” she went on. “And look at their dorsal stripes, Jamie.” But I was not interested in dorsal stripes. I disliked the family instantly. Even their mother, Morag, smiling sweetly and saying nothing, seemed to me to be unpleasant.
“Right, let’s go,” said Hugh.
We rode for what seemed hours. My pony was called Bullrush and was a strange dun colour. He was steady and sure-footed and about as exciting to ride as an overworked riding-school nag.
“I suppose you’re used to Arabs and thoroughbreds?” asked Duncan after a while.
I nodded. “I do a lot of dressage and a spot of show-jumping,” I said, in a voice so lordly that even I was surprised by it.
“I thought so. You have that sort of seat,” Hugh replied scornfully.
Flora and Jo Jo, having hit it off straight away, were chattering and laughing together. Every few moments Jo Jo leant down to pat her pony, which was called Curlew. “He’s so lovely,” she enthused. “He’s the nicest pony I’ve ever ridden.”
Beastly little liar, I thought sourly, recalling the ponies she rode at the superior riding-school we attended at home.
After an hour we turned homewards. Evening was falling and midges charged out of the bracken to attack us like invading armies. Duncan had stopped trying to talk to me. I wasn’t surprised. I just couldn’t relate to him however hard I tried, but worse than that I was filled with such loathing for them all that it frightened me.
We turned the ponies out into a field before eating scones in a large, airy kitchen. Then Flora took Jo Jo off to look at some foals, while I kicked the gravel impatiently with my heels and thought of our house in Wimbledon which is now worth half a million, or would be if we turned it into flats.
“How much is this place worth?” I asked Hugh after a long silence.
“About five hundred thousand if you count the land as well,” he replied, sounding surprised.
“Same as our house then. We are only here while Dad does his study of the habitat,” I said, “though I’ve no idea what’s so special here.”
Hugh nodded. “By the sound of it you don’t like being here,” he said.
“Yes and no,” I replied. “But to be quite honest, it’s a bit far from the bright lights for me.”
“I thought so.”
And the funny thing was, as I behaved in this negative, bad-mannered fashion, I was hating myself.
I looked around. “Why don’t you use the stables over there – the stone ones?” I asked, pointing. “They’ve even got the remains of a room at the end, which would be ideal for a tack room. Wouldn’t they be cooler in summer and warmer in winter than your new timber ones?”
“Yes, they would be, but we can’t use them. No horse will go inside. They’re haunted,” replied Hugh.
“Oh, tell me another! You don’t mean to say you actually believe in ghosts?” I cried, delighted to discover a crack in his armour of superiority.
“They are out of bounds. It’s as simple as that. And I advise you to keep away from them,” Duncan said firmly.
When the time came to go home Flora said, “Don’t come over tomorrow, Jo Jo, because we’re going to be out all day and we’ll be back very late. The one after would be fine. Bring lunch and stay all day. I’ll look after you. We can school in the paddock and jump the cross-country course – if you want to.”
“Of course I want to,” cried Jo Jo, beaming.
I turned to look at the old stables before I left. I could see that once there had been a cobbled yard there and two doors; but now the roof was falling in and the cobbles were overgrown with weeds.
Duncan was watching me. “Keep away from it, Jamie. Do you hear me?” he said.
And unexpectedly I replied, “Aye, I hear you all right.” I had always said “yes” until this moment, never “aye”.
As we walked home the sun was setting over the loch. The hills were bathed in the light of its rays. The water in the loch did not move. Heaven knows what secrets it hid in its deep, dark waters.
“I’m glad I’m not going with you again, Jamie. You were really horrible. I was ashamed to call you my brother,” Jo Jo said. “And they were so kind, that’s what made it so much worse. And isn’t Duncan handsome? Much more handsome than disagreeable old you,” she teased.
I didn’t answer. I felt drawn now to the old stable as wasps to jam. I saw myself there tomorrow. When the family I can’t name returned from their day out, I would be sitting on a bucket, chewing a blade of grass, and I would say, “Now who’s afraid of big bad ghosts?” I would laugh. I would show them that I had more courage than the three of them put together. I felt lightheaded with hate and a little mad as we reached our rented house.
Jo Jo reported my bad behaviour; she always does.
“Oh, Jamie, how could you behave like that?” Mother asked. “They won’t ask you again.”
“They haven’t. And I don’t care. I’m going for a hike tomorrow with Binkie. I’m not looking after Jo Jo again,” I replied angrily.
“But why are you so angry, Jamie? It’s not like you, darling,” Mother said. “What’s happened?”
“I don’t like being called Jamie. I’m James. And I’m not dar
ling,” I said, going to my bedroom and slamming the door after me. Next day I rose late. Mother packed me sandwiches and a flask of coffee.
“Expect me when you see me,” I said.
She did not answer. I think she was glad to be rid of me. I called to Binkie, “Come on – walkies. Hurry, I haven’t got all day.”
I heard mother say, “What’s come over him?” and Jo Jo’s reply,
“I don’t know. He was foul yesterday. It was so embarrassing.”
“Perhaps the walk will do him good,” replied Mother.
“He was even rude about the ponies, and they are so lovely. A thoroughbred could never have managed the hills and the rocks,” Jo Jo continued.
But I didn’t care. I walked away from them with Binkie at my heels, full of aggression and spite, bent on showing up the family I can’t name as a pack of wimps.
I walked a long way round to the house where they lived. Binkie was very hot by the time we reached it and the midges were everywhere. The Highland ponies were standing head to tail in the field. In the loose boxes the straw was stacked up round the sides. Everything was quiet and empty. Because I had slept so late it was already evening and a mist was coming down as I stood looking at the old, empty stable, which drew me to it like a magnet.
A pony neighed in the field. An aeroplane droned in the sky above. Suddenly I was afraid. I sat on the grass near the old stable and ate the sandwiches and drank the coffee Mother had prepared. Binkie was restless. He did not like the stable either. He looked into my eyes and whined. He wanted to go home, now, straight away. He, too, was afraid. At last I stood up, returned the remains of my picnic to my backpack and said sternly to myself, “James, you are not a wimp. Go forth and conquer!”
I left my backpack on the grass and called to Binkie, “Come on you old fool, hurry,” before walking towards the stable, my heart lurching, my limbs shaking. Dusk was descending. Soon the family would return. Time was running out. I told myself this, but still my legs refused to move any faster and my hands felt clammy with fear. At the same time I felt dragged forwards by some unexplained force, while Binkie held back, whining pathetically, his tongue hanging out, his hackles up, his tail down. Nothing would make him enter the stable, neither kind words nor anger. So I went in alone.
The Pullein-Thompson Treasury of Horse and Pony Stories Page 2