The Pullein-Thompson Treasury of Horse and Pony Stories

by Christine Pullein-Thompson

  It was dark and musty inside. Cobwebs brushed my face, brambles scratched my hands, creepers wrapped themselves round my arms, impeding my progress. The windows were no more than slits in the walls and let in no light. The earth floor was pitted with holes. The stalls were rough and ready, their partitions broken. The mangers were crumbling into dust, the hayracks collapsed. A rat scurried across my feet. The whole place smelt of dust and decay. But now I felt triumphant, for I had braved the building and there was no ghost. I was about to leave when a bat flew past soundlessly; then another and another, more and more of them until suddenly I wanted to scream. I thought I understood then that the old stable was a sanctuary for bats, an endangered species.

  So that’s it, I thought. They lied to me because they didn’t want the bats disturbed. Well, I’ve done it now. And who cares? The bats will return soon enough. But though my thoughts were brave, I was actually scared of the bats, imagining them in my hair, in my clothes, sucking my blood; my body trembled with fear, my face grew hot. They’re really vampires, I thought, moving through a cloud of them towards the faint light which came through the open doorway. In a minute they’ll overwhelm me, knock me down, go for my jugular vein.

  Now there were other sounds; the neighing of terrified horses followed by the voice of an old man screaming in a tongue I did not understand. Chains clanked. Dogs barked. Doors swung shut. I think I prayed then, though what I said I can’t remember. Another second and a man stood in front of me, waving an enormous broadsword which in Scotland is called a claymore. He was long haired, wild-eyed, unshaven, almost naked, and without shoes. There was only one word I understood in his whole vocabulary and that was my name, James. And the fact that he knew my name only added to my terror. Another second and he had thrown down his claymore and was clawing at my face with his hands. Bending low I went for his stomach – only it wasn’t there. I put my hands round him and they met without anything between. I threw my weight against him and almost fell down on the far side. Yet his presence was everywhere. And there was the dreadful smell of a man who has not washed for years mixed with the smell of sweating horses and the excrement of bats.

  Then without warning fear possessed me. My body went limp with it. My eyes stopped focusing. I was overcome by an indescribable feeling of terror. The man had picked up his weapon again and I knew he was about to launch his final blow. I tried to protect my head with my hands. Then my feet began slipping on the earth floor. Next there was a dreadful cracking noise, a splintering of wood. Everything appeared to be spinning until something fell with a rush of dust and dirt and old birds’ nests, hitting me full on. Then I lay in the dust and the dirt, unable to move, while the man laughed a cackling, unearthly, triumphant laugh before everything fell silent again, as silent as the grave.

  I cannot tell you how long I lay there. When I came round, faithful Binkie was licking my face and whining. The sky had cleared. Moonlight cast gruesome shadows. My mouth was full of dust and dirt, my shirt sticky with blood, my right shoulder hurt and my head ached unbearably. There was no sign of the man now. I was alone, lying in an empty stable with Binkie urging me to get up, yapping hoarsely and urgently.

  Then I heard voices shouting, “There he is. Look, over there!” The voices were high with excitement.

  I struggled from beneath the rafter which lay across me.

  “I said he would be there, the idiot, didn’t I?” called Duncan.

  “He deserves to be hung,” shouted Hugh like a judge passing sentence.

  “He’s hurt, he’s covered with blood,” cried softhearted Flora. “But he’s moving. Oh, thank heavens, he’s moving.”

  “I had better ring up his parents. They must be beside themselves with worry,” cried Morag, hurrying towards the house.

  I was escorted inside, my shoulder examined and a doctor called.

  “He’s related to our enemies. I discovered that this afternoon,” said their father (or the head of the house, whichever you prefer). “His mother’s family stole our sheep. She’s a — ,” and he named a name I even now do not wish to reveal for fear that someone will say it isn’t true.

  “There was a feud. They came at night and they hamstrung our horses in that very stable.” And this man, whose forebears had been our enemies, looked at me with the coldest, greyest eyes I’ve ever seen.

  “The ghost, if it was a ghost, talked in a strange language,” I said.

  “Gaelic, of course,” Duncan replied scornfully.

  “We told you not to go in there,” insisted Hugh.

  “So why did you?” demanded Flora, looking at me with wonderful green eyes.

  But of course I couldn’t tell them the truth. I tried to wash my face and rinsed my mouth out in their bathroom, dried myself with a towel. I could not do much because now it hurt to move my right arm in any direction.

  My parents arrived at the same time as the doctor. They carted me off to hospital to have my broken collar bone put back in place. Otherwise, miraculously, I was unhurt. But inside it was a different story. I felt devastated by what had happened and my head ached unceasingly.

  When we reached the hospital, Mother said, “How could you go where you were forbidden to go, Jamie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It was a compulsion. I think I understand him. His whole personality was taken over. You saw a change, so did Jo Jo,” replied Father.

  “But why?”

  “It’s to do with your side of the family,” Father replied glumly. “They lived not far from here. Is that correct? That’s what your friends say anyway.”

  Mother nodded, while I sat on a chair in a long corridor waiting to see a doctor, sick of the whole beastly business.

  “What was his name? You know, that ghastly great-great-grandfather of yours,” continued Father.

  “James. James Hamish.”

  “And he was one of the worst rustlers in the whole of the Highlands. He stole another clan’s sheep and burnt their houses to the ground. It’s all in an old book of yours,” Father continued. “You know, the one with the pages stuck together; the one you never open.”

  Mother sat saying nothing. I looked up and down the long corridor, hoping a doctor would appear. Jo Jo had been left with a neighbour called Mrs McDonald who makes the most wonderful scones I’ve ever eaten.

  “James Hamish had rather a nasty habit, Jamie,” continued Father, looking at me. “When he had stolen the sheep and burnt the other clan’s houses, he would cut the hamstrings on their horses before he left.”

  “So they couldn’t give chase?” I asked. “And they never could, could they? They were finished.”

  Father nodded.

  And then, suddenly, the tears came. I was almost fourteen and still I cried. My parents looked away. Then Mother said, “Oh, Jamie, stop, please stop. You’re not responsible for the sins of your forefathers.”

  “The man who attacked you was only protecting his horses. I don’t think he will come back,” Father said.

  “I didn’t think you believed in ghosts. I thought only fools and old people believed in ghosts,” I said, holding my aching head.

  “There are many strange things in the world we don’t understand,” replied Father. “Think about an ant, Jamie, so tiny, but everything is still there, brain, genes, reproductive organs – it works. Anything is possible,” he said as a doctor appeared at last, followed by a nurse.

  “So you were attacked by a ghost,” said the doctor, smiling at me. “I haven’t had such a case before. It should be interesting.”

  Because I had passed out in the old stable, I was kept in hospital that night. I couldn’t sleep. I relived the last few hours over and over again. I kept hearing the horses struggling, their anguished neighs, the cries of the man in Gaelic. When I slept I woke with bats in my hair, screaming, but of course there were no bats. A nurse gave me a sedative. When I woke again the sun was streaming through the windows in the ward where I lay.

  “He cut their hamstrings, a
ll of them,” I said to a new nurse who appeared, shaking a thermometer.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “The ghost.”

  She looked at me as though I was crazy. “Open your mouth, I want to take your temperature,” she said. “And stop your silly talk,” she added.

  “You don’t believe in ghosts then?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “The hamstrings are the tendons above the hocks on horses’ hind legs,” I explained, unable to get the awful truth out of my mind.

  “Keep your mouth closed,” she replied, hurrying off to deal with another patient, an old man who might have been the ghost if he had not been washed, shaven and smooth-faced.

  I went home later that day. Everyone was very kind. I went straight to bed. Jo Jo brought me a cup of tea on a tray. Morag had flowers delivered. Binkie slept on my feet, unable to tear himself away from me. I stayed in bed the whole day. My mind wandered. Several times I cried uncontrollably, burying my face in the pillow so no one would hear. Mother said that I was suffering from delayed shock.

  In the evening a get-well card was delivered by hand. Inside was written: “The feud is over. The ghost has gone. Dad has bulldozed the building and erected safe homes for the bats.” It was signed: Hugh, Duncan and Flora. Flora had added some kisses after her name. At the bottom a PS had been added. This is what it said:

  “Our forefathers were awful too. We have a dungeon underneath our house where prisoners were chained to the rings still there in the walls. There is also a barrel with spikes inside, in which prisoners were rolled down a nearby hill, to an agonising death, of course. So you see our ancestors were savages just like yours!”

  I wrote back saying I wanted us to be friends. I apologised for my behaviour and for that of my ancestors. As for the ghost, he never did return. In ‘killing’ me he had no doubt avenged the death of his horses, for they must have been destroyed later by someone unable to bear their agony. I try not to think about the incident any more. But I still sometimes wake screaming in the night. And I know it really did happen for I have the proof – a scar which has never faded on my right shoulder, a scar in the shape of a claymore.

  A Little Grey Foal

  Christine Pullein-Thompson

  From the moment Littlecote Riding School closed down, I had wanted a pony. For two years I had helped there at weekends and in the holidays. I had saved every penny for riding lessons and second-hand riding clothes. Then suddenly, without warning, the whole establishment was sold to a developer for a million pounds. I was eleven then and whenever another advertisement appeared offering desirable homes for thousands and thousands of pounds on the Littlecote estate, I felt like tearing it down. But the worst part was not knowing where the ponies went, because we were never told.

  I lived with my parents and two brothers at number nine Derby Road, in a terraced house with a garden twenty-five metres long and three bedrooms and a lounge-diner. Both my parents went out to work, so did my brothers. I was the baby of the family and hated it.

  Without the riding school I had nowhere to go and nothing to do at weekends, apart from delivering the Sunday papers for Mr Crossman at the corner shop, and babysitting for the Lamberts, who lived in a modern house and owned a paddock which lay between them and the other houses on the estate.

  The Lamberts’ baby was teething one evening and they were grateful because I’d managed to soothe him to sleep. So grateful that Mr Lambert said, “I’ve just thought of something, Sharon. I know you want a pony. You can keep him in our paddock if you like. We won’t charge you anything. You can have it for nothing.”

  “You don’t mean it, not really?” I gasped. “Oh, thank you!”

  So I started saving again. Every penny I earned went in a tin with pony written on its lid. Mum put spare change in it from time to time and once, when she was feeling rich, a five-pound note. But Dad was against the whole idea.

  “You haven’t got the time and you’ll never have the money,” he told me. “Horses are for the rich, Sharon, not for us.”

  “Oh, yeah? You wait and see, Dad,” I replied.

  Everybody seemed to want me for baby-sitting that long hot summer, so that by October I had over one hundred pounds in my tin. I knew that it wouldn’t buy much, but I decided to go to the monthly horse sale in the cattle market just the once because that would give me an idea of how much money I needed. It was held on a Friday and luckily it was half-term. I borrowed a money belt from one of my brothers and put my money in it. I was too excited to eat any breakfast. I had persuaded Richard, my best friend, to accompany me. He’s tall and fair-haired and good at passing exams. We caught a bus together.

  “I think you’re crazy, Sharon. What are you going to do with a horse?” he asked, paying both our fares.

  “Ride it, of course,” I said.

  The market was crowded with people and there were horses everywhere: thin, broken down, overweight, neighing wildly, looking round for lost friends. Frightened, anxious, resigned, and a few – which I supposed had never been ill-treated or sold before – were looking interested and alert. I wiped my eyes with a tissue.

  “You’re not crying, are you?” demanded Richard.

  “Yeah. What does it look like?” I retorted.

  We watched them being sold in the big building beyond the pens. They went for hundreds of pounds, or most of them did.

  “It’s hopeless, they’re too expensive. We might as well go home, Sharon,” Richard said, pulling at my arm.

  “Not yet. Let’s wait a little longer.”

  The sale was nearly over when a foal appeared, looking anxiously around for its mother. It brought a lump to my throat. It was mousey grey with a well-bred head and small, neat, grey hoofs, and a tail the shape of a fox’s brush.

  People were drifting away. Richard was still pulling at my arm when I raised my hand and called out “Fifty”.

  And heard the auctioneer reply, “Fifty I’m bid, fifty.”

  “He’ll be much too small for you, Sharon,” Richard whispered.

  “I don’t care, I’ve got to save him,” I whispered back.

  At first a tall, thin woman with a worn face was bidding against me, but at sixty pounds she dropped out and a fat man took over. And I kept marvelling that I was being taken seriously, that no one had demanded to see my money first, or asked whether I was eighteen.

  “One hundred,” I shouted raising my hand, my stomach churning.

  “One hundred I’m bid, one hundred. For the last time, one hundred,” shouted the auctioneer as his hammer fell.

  “He’s yours,” said Richard, as though I hadn’t noticed!

  He was put in a pen with another foal. He had baby teeth and wouldn’t eat the bread I offered him. Richard went with me to the auctioneer’s office where I handed over one hundred pounds, some of it in fifty-pence pieces.

  Then I said to the clerk, “I don’t know how to get him home, that’s the problem,” while Richard sighed beside me.

  “Ask the bloke over there,” said the clerk, pointing at an enormous man with a hat on the back of his head, smoking a cigar. “He’s Mr Collins. He’ll help you.”

  “Will do,” Mr Collins said when I explained my predicament. “I’ll deliver him, but it won’t be till late afternoon. What’s your address?”

  Richard told him.

  “Let’s say four o’clock then. It’ll cost you a fiver. And that’s a lot less than I usually charge,” Mr Collins said, smiling at us both.

  Richard produced a fiver and gave it to him.

  “You didn’t have to,” I said as we walked away. “But thanks all the same. I’ll pay you back, I promise.”

  I said goodbye to Richard when we got off the bus. Then I rushed home and took the plastic bucket from under the sink, filled it with water and carried it to the Lamberts’ field. After that I knocked on their back door, but they weren’t at home and nor were Mum and Dad, and suddenly I felt alone and rather scared. What if I
can’t manage the foal? I thought. What if the Lamberts are angry? Supposing he leans over the wire and eats their roses? But a huge cattle truck was just drawing up outside our house. A minute later Mr Collins was letting down the ramp and asking, “Where do you want him then?”

  We took the foal to the field together, me pulling, Mr Collins pushing. “Bit small for you, isn’t he?” he asked as I slammed the gate shut.

  “Yes. I’m not going to ride him, I’m going to look after him,” I said.

  “Well, I’ll be off then,” said Mr Collins, handing me a tatty hemp halter. “Best of luck.”

  I called the foal Prince because I wanted him to feel he was someone special. He spent that first evening walking round and round the small field, looking lost and frightened, and I knew he wanted his mother. Later, while it was still light, Mum and Dad and the Lamberts looked at him. Mum said he was a sweetie, Dad said that he would be a lot of trouble. Prince kept his distance, trusting no one.

  “Don’t look so worried. He’ll be all right with time,” said Mr Lambert, rumpling my hair.

  “You can teach our kiddies to ride on him, dear,” suggested Mrs Lambert, smiling.

  “He’s too young. He’s just a little grey foal,” I said.

  I visited Prince every day. I brought him oats and bran from the pet shop and soon he stopped looking for his mother, and looked for me instead. He would stand with his little head over the fence and his nostrils would tremble as he saw me approaching along the road with his food. He knew the times of my visits exactly. The Lamberts fed him too, on apple peelings and bits of carrot, and slowly October became November and the weather grew cold. I longed to buy Prince a rug then but I hadn’t enough money. I started to buy him bales of hay, pushing them home from the pet shop in a wheelbarrow. Soon rain fell in bucketfuls and I wished I could afford a shelter, but of course I hadn’t enough money for that either. There were muddy patches in the field now, and busy moles threw up great mounds of dark earth. I always seemed to be in a mackintosh and muddy boots. Mum said that the house was beginning to look like a farmyard. The kitchen floor kept getting muddy and my bedroom had bits of hay scattered everywhere.