“You’re a nurse, you’ll know what to do,” I said. “Please help, Mum. It’s urgent…”
“Okay, just let me get my boots…”
This time we took the car, and oats, and a head collar, plus paper and a pen because Mum was efficient and thought of everything.
Presently she was kneeling beside the pony, listening to her breathing.
“I think she’s got pneumonia,” she said, standing up. “See if she’s got a rug in the stable…”
“She hasn’t got a stable,” said David.
“Try the house again. Make sure there isn’t a message pinned on the back door,” said Mum.
David disappeared while I sat by the pony. She was liver-chestnut with a small white star and her breathing sounded like an engine gone wrong.
“She’s going to die, isn’t she?” I asked.
“We’ll have to get her home,” replied Mum as David returned with his thumbs down.
“Do you think she can walk that far?” I asked.
“She’ll have to. I’ll just write a message for the Bullocks to tell them what we’re doing,” Mum said, putting Dreamy’s head collar on the sick pony.
We pulled the pony to her feet. “What’s her name?” I asked.
“Cocoa. They call her Cocoa,” replied David, who went to school with the Bullock children.
She was very thin and her sides were soaked in sweat. David fetched a tartan rug from the car and put it over her, while Mum put a note through the letterbox.
“You lead. I’ll follow in the car,” she said.
We had to stop every few minutes to let Cocoa rest. The trees were frosted and the grass crisp and white. Dreamy whinnied when we reached the yard. Mum had bedded down the shed next to his box.
“I’ve rung the vet. She’ll be over at once,” she told us, filling a bucket with water.
We put one of Dreamy’s rugs on Cocoa and made a bran-mash; then our vet, Mrs Chivers, arrived and after listening to Cocoa’s breathing she said, “They ought to be prosecuted. She’s got pneumonia and she’s had it for some time.”
“Will you put it down in writing? We don’t want to be accused of theft,” asked Mum.
“Yes. Certainly I will,” answered Mrs Chivers.
Later that day the Bullocks came storming round to our place. Dad was home by then.
“Where’s our pony? What have you done to her?” demanded Mr Bullock, a massive man with hardly any hair on his head and bulging grey eyes.
The three children, two girls and one boy were snivelling.
“We want Cocoa back. We want to ride. You’ve stolen our pony.”
“She isn’t fit to ride; she’s dying!” I shouted, my voice shrill with anger.
“You took her without asking. How dare you?” snapped Mrs Bullock, in high heels and mauve suit.
Our parents took them aside. When they left they walked straight past us without a word.
“What did you tell them?” I asked.
“We had to threaten them with the RSPCA. It was most unpleasant, but it worked,” replied Mum.
We gave Cocoa the best of everything, so that when spring arrived she was looking marvellous. We loved her second only to Dreamy. On the third day of the Easter holidays all the Bullocks appeared in our backyard, the children dressed for riding.
“We want our pony back – now,” said Mr Bullock bluntly. “She isn’t yours and you are not having the use of her a minute longer.”
“Actually we haven’t ridden her once,” I replied, seething.
“She still needs looking after; she was lousy, starving and nearly dead when we fetched her,” Mum said as we walked across the orchard, with David following in floods of tears.
They pulled a tatty halter over Cocoa’s neat, chestnut ears and dragged her away.
“They didn’t even say thank you,” wept David.
“They are clever; the first fine day and they take her back,” said Mum.
“And don’t offer to pay a penny,” I added.
None of us could bear to see Cocoa alone in her horrible paddock, so we avoided going that way; and when at last David and I went past with Dreamy and a bike, she wasn’t there. The Bullocks were playing in the garden so, summoning all my courage, I called, “Where’s Cocoa?”
And the boy shouted, “It’s none of your business.”
“She’s gone to the sale,” called the smallest Bullock. “She went after we had our breakfast, in a big lorry. She will probably go for meat and then we can all have new bikes. You made her naughty. She was all right until you had her. Daddy said you ruined her. We hate you.”
“She was quiet because she was dying,” I shouted.
“Which sale?” yelled David, turning Dreamy round. “The sale!”
“They mean Wickham, it’s today!” I wailed.
I leapt on the bike while David, ignoring the hardness of the ground, kicked Dreamy into a gallop. Mum was at home and I rushed indoors yelling, “Cocoa’s gone to Wickham market. The Bullocks have sent her and she’s going for meat. We made her all fat and lovely and all for nothing.”
I heard the orchard gate slam, and a minute later David was flinging his arms round Mum’s neck, crying, “We must do something! We must buy her, please, please, please. Don’t say no. Please don’t say no. She can’t go for meat.”
“Keep calm. We may be too late and I don’t know what your father will say,” Mum cried, searching for her handbag.
“I need a pony. Dreamy’s too strong for me! Please, Mum,” continued David. “Dreamy’s too big for me. I can’t mount him.”
“Come on, we’re off,” cried Mum.
We leapt in the car. It took us forty minutes to reach Wickham market. All the lights were against us and there was a traffic jam in the centre of the town. We parked the car and rushed to the market. There were horses everywhere but we couldn’t see Cocoa. “Perhaps it’s the wrong market.”
“She’s probably gone already. We took too long getting here; if only we could have flown,” said David, looking desolate.
We walked up and down the rows of horses, old sad ones, bright hopefuls; a large anxious horse, his knees scarred; ponies straight off the fens, thin as toastracks; two-year-olds shod and advertised as quiet to ride. Mum bought a catalogue and there she was, Number 28, Cocoa, 12.2hh, eight-year-old mare – nothing else. We knew it was as good as a death warrant.
“They are selling Number 53. We’re too late,” said Mum, leading the way into the sunlit street outside.
“But where is she?” wailed David.
“Sold. Gone,” snapped Mum. “We were too late. We did our best, our very best, but we were too late.”
“I’d like to kill the Bullocks,” cried David, climbing into the car. “She was so sweet, so perfect, so good and now…”
“Don’t go on, David,” Mum said and we saw she was crying too.
We were nearly home when we saw the cattle truck parked in a lay-by. Mum slowed down and we could see ears through the slats, pony ears.
“It just could be taking them to the abbatoir,” said Mum, stopping.
We rushed across the road. The driver was reading a newspaper. David and I clambered up the side of the truck and we could hear him talking to Mum, “My mate’s gone to get a cup of tea. Then we’ll be off again…
“You’re right, horses shouldn’t go for meat; but there’s nothing I can do. No one wants them for riding.”
“We do!” shrieked David.
Mum gave the driver the hundred and fifty pounds that Cocoa had fetched at the auction and we led her home. We couldn’t do anything about the others and they haunt me still; they’ll always haunt me. Why do people breed horses if there aren’t enough good homes? That’s what I keep asking myself.
Lost on the Moors
Diana Pullein-Thompson
The road that runs from Elvanfoot to Moffatt in the lowlands of Scotland, not far from the English border, was no place for a rider, even in the fifties, when, with a girl ca
lled Ailsa Ravencroft, I rode from John O’Groats to Land’s End, so that we should know our own country from top to bottom. It wasn’t very long since I had lain in bed for almost a year with tuberculosis, when it was a much-feared disease for which rest was part of the cure, and I think I also wanted to prove to myself and my relations that I was now completely fit and well.
On that particular day when I was lost on the moors, Ailsa’s horse, aptly named None The Wiser (for although pleasant-looking he never seemed to learn any sense), had lost his nerve, hating the foul-smelling lorries which pounded their way through the Scottish landscape, and I had gone on alone after arrangements had sadly been made for him to follow by horsebox. I didn’t feel alone because I had the company of Favorita, and if I spoke to her she always put back one elegant, flea-bitten grey ear to catch my words.
It wasn’t agreeable for either of us as we made our way along the shining tarmac, regretting the absence of a verge and flinching at the noise and the smell of the traffic. The drivers cared nothing for a solitary rider – many came so close that damp dust spattered us, and the motorbikes irritated us almost beyond endurance. And all the time to our left lay the great, tempting moors of Moffatt, desolate, empty and quiet but for the call of the curlews and the distant bleating of sheep.
My map showed a Roman road, a track that ran almost all the way, it seemed, to Moffatt, which was a mile from the place where I had arranged to meet Ailsa at half past six. No one had been able to tell me whether the way was still open, for no one but the shepherds walked the moors and none of them were to be found. But at Elvanfoot there had been people who were optimistic.
“Och, as likely as not it’ll be open,” they told me. “It’s a grand ride when the weather’s all right.” But I knew from experience that there were Scotsmen who, when in doubt, said what they thought you wanted to hear.
It wasn’t long, however, before the contrast between the busy, exasperating road and the brown sweep of moorland was too much.
“Nothing venture, nothing win,” I told myself, turning up a track that led through a farmstead right to the Roman road.
As I went, my heart lifted and a new spring came into Favorita’s long, swinging stride. It was lovely to escape the traffic at last, to canter across the damp green fields with the cool heather-scented breeze in my face and the wide, clear sky above, streaked with soaring birds, touched by pale sunshine.
Soon I left the pasture and came to the bleaker moors that seemed to stretch for miles and miles, undulating like corrugated cardboard. Large trees gave way to stunted rowans and then to myrtle; the land grew browner, softer; the grass sparse. For a time the track was there and Favorita, my good grey mare, hurried on eagerly with pricked ears and bright eyes.
She had seen so much: a wild and angry sea at John O’Groats; the cold April sleet falling on the long straight road from Wick; Dunrobin Castle, white as icing sugar, shuttered and turreted; a landmark for sailors. She had slept anxiously in its stables which she had believed haunted, and in countless alien fields, stables and stalls. She had come through Drumochter Pass and stared wonderingly at the lofty Grampians and the naked hideousness of the hydro-electric developments. She had waited impatiently outside shops while we bought provisions, drunk deeply from burns and rushing rivers and buckets brought by well-wishers on the way. Now her Arab blood from the Royal Stud of Hungary which gave her courage, intelligence and a strong, impatient will, was to be tested in the wild, bog-ridden country that lay before us. But, although she could not be expected to have the native sense of an Exmoor or Fell pony, she had learned stoicism as a second whipper-in’s horse, turning back into woods to bring out lost or lagging hounds while all her friends galloped on. As a brood mare she had gained a certain calmness and, in dressage tests, some self-control.
Presently the Roman road narrowed, becoming, I thought, too winding and uncertain to be genuine, and, when we had covered about seven miles, it petered out. Now the shadows were lengthening with late afternoon. Round and beautiful, the sun was drifting behind clouds in the western sky. There were great gullies – the dips in the corrugated cardboard – which were to plague us all the way, and then, quite suddenly, quite horribly, a shining, glinting, brand-new barbed-wire fence stretching like a thin silver scar to right and left across the landscape as far as the eye could see.
I felt a sudden catch at the heart, as you can guess. Should I turn back and retrace the seven miles to that horrible road? No, I hate turning back. It goes against the very core of my nature. But if there was no path, how could I find my way across the moors? Supposing night came down and I rode in mad circles? Well then, I should come back here to the fence and perhaps pick up the track again and then the road, guided by the lights of the long-distance lorries making their way to England. A compass? I realised then, with a twinge of anger at myself, that I had left it with Ailsa. Determined to travel light, I had emptied a heap of belongings from my saddlebags for her to take in the horsebox. But I had a map, two miles to an inch; the sun was still visible in the changing sky, and my watch still ticked.
“When in doubt, go on,” I told myself. “Never turn back.”
The posts rose twenty centimetres above the wire, and I knew what to do to lessen the chance of an accident. I fished Favorita’s halter out of a saddlebag and tied it from one post to another where the ground seemed firmest. Then I unrolled my mackintosh and hung it over the halter, making that part of the fence into a formidable-looking jump. The top was now some fifteen centimetres higher than the highest strand of wire and if Favorita made a mistake, which wasn’t likely, she would probably hit the rope, which might cause her to fall but would not cut her. The obstacle had a solidness which would make her stand back and take care. She had never yet hit any jump hard enough to bring her to her knees. And she was no fool. If anything, she was over-careful.
I mounted her again and, without waiting for any command, she swung round and took me over the jump (for had she not in her youth waited many a time while I made her obstacles out of petrol cans and rustic poles?). She landed heavily and the soil under her hoofs gave way with awful sucking noises, but she righted herself and with an effort pulled herself out and waited to be congratulated with a pat and word of praise.
Halter and mackintosh back in their places, we continued on our way, stopping every now and then to consult the map, sun and watch. It was now ten minutes past five, so I presumed the sun would soon be due west and chose my direction accordingly, but the contours worried me, and I wished I had listened more carefully during geography lessons at school. Perhaps if I had grasped the nettle of longitude and latitude more thoroughly I could have found the map more useful now that I was lost.
There only seemed to be crazy sheep paths that wound here and there and took us nowhere, the sheep who made them having been concerned with picking the best fodder and not with finding their way to Moffatt, or anywhere else for that matter, except perhaps to water when the hot August sun beat down on the shadeless acres. We were forced to make our way across untrodden land, where the ground grew softer the further we went until it squelched under us like a sponge being squeezed of water.
Frightened of bogs, and already seeing Favorita sinking from sight before my very eyes, 1 dismounted and walked ahead, testing the ground as we went. But she was impatient to finish the journey and enjoy a feed of oats. She felt the first whispers of night in the soft air and heard it in the last eerie calls of the curlews. It was all I could do to keep her behind me and she made the most ridiculous suggestions about which direction we should take, not aware that we were heading for Moffatt – or so I hoped. It is amazing how small and solitary you feel when lost in open landscape, how wide the sky seems and how quickly dusk comes.
I wanted to keep the great curve of the highest hill to my left. I wanted to see another road, marked on the map as leading down into Moffatt, but there was nothing except the corrugated cardboard and the sky, now empty of birds and the golden glow of sunlight. H
ues of grey and brown don’t lighten the spirits and lift the heart. My thoughts became gloomy and Favorita only wanted to be off the moor and heading for – where? Home, I suppose, still hundreds of miles away.
The gullies grew deeper, sharper and more frequent, their steep sides made hazardous by boulders. Little streams of peaty brown water gurgled fitfully through their bowels. Myrtle grew on their banks.
I hated them. Each one seemed worse than the last and the descent was always difficult with Favorita on my heels. Her patience was almost at an end. She wanted to go first, knowing she could manage the boulders without my guiding hand, and, after a while, I let her loose, to find that she always waited for me on the other side, taking the opportunity to pull at the heather and the sparse, nearly colourless grass.
I do not know how many miles we covered in this manner or whether I always kept in the direction I intended. When the ground was firmer I rode, and we made better time. Our side of the world passed the sun’s rim, and the sky became blank and greyer still with the approach of night.
The moors lay silent before me: hateful, treacherous and cruel; a place where people could die for lack of shade or shelter and sheep lay in winter deep in snowdrifts. With two sweaters under my coat I was warm, and, with spring far advanced, I was not much afraid of a night in the open, but I thought of Ailsa with None The Wiser dragging her around at the end of his halter rope on that little road beyond Moffatt. She would be waiting outside Oakridge Farm, just a name on the map to us and the point we had chosen as our meeting place, perhaps thinking of search parties. And how tiresome to be the cause of a search party, to be so inefficient that people had to forsake their leisure hours to comb the moors for someone who should have known better than to venture there alone without a compass. We had eaten digestive biscuits and cheese for lunch, but now, with my stomach rumbling, hunger added to the gloom.
My map reading was a failure. The road I wanted was not even on the skyline. Even allowing for obstacles and a break of fifteen minutes to rest I should have crossed the moors by six o’clock. It was now half past, and the moors seemed endless. The very sight and smell of them began to fill me with disgust. And the brown hill on my left was a traitor, not being where the map told me it should be.
The Pullein-Thompson Treasury of Horse and Pony Stories Page 17