The Wish Pony

by Catherine Bateson

  I rescued The Secret Garden and walked away. But then I thought of Mum having to bend down, over the baby lump, and I gave in. But I left the banana peel where it was. It certainly wasn’t going back in my bag. I left the scrunched-up wrap, as well. She wouldn’t have to bend for those, she could just get the broom and sweep them up.

  I didn’t care if I was grounded. There was nowhere I was going anyway. Sarah wasn’t going to invite me around for a sleepover, not when she wasn’t even talking to me. I just shoved the rest of the stuff back in my bag, including the maths sheet even though I was supposed to do that for homework. I didn’t feel like doing homework. Why should I do anything for Waddle? She’d got me in this mess.

  I lay on my bed and the tears leaked out the far corners of my eyes and ran into the pillow.

  When Dad got home they both came in to have a chat. I knew it wasn’t going to be a real chat – and it wasn’t. They did all the talking. The word disappointment came up eleven times. I was counting. Mum said worried ten times and Dad said it four times. But then he didn’t say all that much, it was really Mum who was chatting.

  I wasn’t hungry but they made me come out and eat dinner anyway. I didn’t talk to them. I didn’t feel like chatting.

  It was after dinner that it happened. Mum was clearing the table and she turned around, with all the plates piled up in her arms, and she slipped on a bit of the banana peel that she hadn’t seen. It was the tiniest piece. I could hardly see it but Mum slid on it, lost her balance and she – and the plates – crashed to the floor.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Dad was helping her up in seconds. ‘Rita, are you okay?’

  Mum had gone pale. She put a hand on the baby lump. ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice shaking, ‘I think I’m fine. There was a bit of stuff on the floor, that’s all. I’m so unbalanced these days.’ But she didn’t smile when she said it, she just went on being pale and looking frightened. There was broken china all over the floor and Dad’s foot was bleeding but he hadn’t noticed.

  ‘I think you should go and lie down,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to call the doctor?’

  ‘No, no, I think I’m fine, Edward. Really.’

  ‘What in god’s name did you slip on?’ Dad helped Mum into a chair and then swept up the plates, examining the rubbish for clues.

  I sat tight. It was my banana peel. I knew. I’d seen the little squishy edge of it. But I had no idea Mum would fall. I started to cry.

  ‘Ruby,’ Dad said, and his voice was dangerously calm, ‘I think we’ve had enough trouble from you for one day. You have to learn to take a back seat, miss. You’re not the centre of the universe, you know.’

  ‘It was my banana peel,’ I sobbed. ‘I left it on the floor and Mum must have missed some when she swept.’

  ‘You left a banana peel on the floor? You deliberately left a banana peel on the floor?’

  I was sent to bed. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be in the same room with my pale mother who kept her hand on the baby as though her hand was listening to him breathing. I didn’t want to be in the same room as my dad who fussed around her, stroking her hair and kissing her free hand as though she’d just been saved from some big terrible accident.

  It was only a bit of banana peel. You could hardly see it. Honest.

  I changed into my pyjamas. My room felt lonely but I took the Wish Pony into bed with me and held him for a while and told him all about the banana peel and my mother falling and the plates crashing around her. He felt warm in my hand and I couldn’t bear to put him back on the dressing table so I tucked him carefully under the pillow and waited for someone to come in and say they were sorry and kiss me goodnight. But no one did. I didn’t care. I really didn’t.

  Much later I smelt roses and knew Mum was having a bath and that made me feel a bit better so I rolled over and went to sleep.

  Someone must have come and tucked me in because in the morning the Wish Pony was back on the dressing table and the blankets were way up to my chin where they scratched.

  ‘Ruby,’ Dad said when he came out for breakfast, tying his business tie, ‘you need to say a great big sorry to your mother and promise that your behaviour will be perfect in future. You’ve behaved very, very badly.’

  ‘And I want you to write a sorry letter to Sarah,’ Mum said, ‘then we’ll say no more about all this. Okay?’

  ‘A sorry letter?’ I squawked. ‘No way. I’m not sorry. She was mean, Mum. She just took up with Bree and ignored me. I’m not saying sorry. She should.’

  Mum pressed her mouth together tightly. ‘You are writing a sorry letter,’ she said firmly. ‘After school today you can choose a card to write it in.’

  Even the prospect of using one of Mum’s cards didn’t make me happier. It was so unfair. What about Sarah’s sorry letter to me? Was she going to have to write one? No, of course not. She’d just dumped me for the new girl but no one was going to make her write to me. That was just normal girl-stuff. Totally okay.

  I did give Mum a hug. Of course I was pleased that neither she nor the baby were hurt and it had been a stupid, spiteful thing to do. But even as I hugged her, I was still smarting over the letter for Sarah and a bit of me hung back so it wasn’t as big – or loving – a hug as it should have been and I know she knew that even though neither of us said anything.

  The Wish Pony was bored. He had quite enjoyed the part of the night he had spent under Ruby’s pillow, but then before he could even get used to the sound of her breathing, which reminded him of something so far back in his memory he couldn’t quite get to it, he was whisked away, back to the dressing-table top. Boring. The street light shone in through the window and he galloped up and down for a while but he soon got tired of that too and by the time the sun edged up, he was back where Ruby’s mother had put him.

  Not even facing the window, but turned instead to the mirror so all day he had to stare at his own reflection. For the first little while he admired his mane and the ripples in his tail. But when all was said and done a mane was just a mane, no matter how thick and sculpted, and a tail was just a tail.

  He missed listening to Magda talk to her dead husbands. He missed her singing and cleaning. He missed the sound of the cat purring beside him. He missed – oh, he missed so much he would have wept huge horsey tears if he’d been able.

  When Ruby came through the door in the late afternoon, he was so pleased he was nearly certain his tail flicked a little to one side and his nostrils quivered. But if they did, Ruby didn’t see. She flung her bag down on the floor and herself on to the bed and cried, face down on the pillow which muffled her sobs.

  Oh no, thought the Wish Pony. He strained with all his might to tell her silently to come and pick him up. Just that. Just to pick him up and hold him. But Ruby didn’t.

  A few minutes later her mother came and sat down on the edge of the bed and patted her head. But if Ruby said anything, the Wish Pony couldn’t hear it because the pillow swallowed the sound. Her mother sat there for a while patting. Ruby hiccupped a few times but stubbornly refused to look at her mother. Neither of them looked at him.

  The Wish Pony shook his mane impatiently. Nothing happened, of course, his mane remained sculpted in its perfect waves but nonetheless the Wish Pony felt a little better.

  I don’t care, he told himself, if she doesn’t want to know about me, she doesn’t have to. It doesn’t bother me. He willed himself back to his favourite daydream in which he galloped wildly across some plains with a whole herd of ponies just like him, whinnying and nickering together, their hooves making a glad thudding sound across the warm earth. He could almost feel the sun on his back and hear the startled chitters from the little ground birds that flew up in alarm as the ponies thundered past.

  ‘How did it go?’ Mum asked me as soon as I was in the door. ‘Are you and Sarah talking again?’

  ‘I told you it wouldn’t work,’ I said, ‘and it didn’t. Sarah didn’t even read the card. As soon as she knew it was from me she just thr
ew it in the bin. I hate her. It was one of my favourite cards, too.’

  Mum shrugged. ‘Hate’s a big word,’ she said.

  ‘She said it first.’

  ‘You’re just going to have to try harder, pumpkin,’ Mum said. ‘I think you must have really hurt Sarah. She’s not a vindictive kid.’

  ‘Why are you taking her side? She’s the one who dumped me for the new girl.’

  ‘After you tried to cheat from her.’ Mum shook her head at me, ‘I think you have to take responsibility here, Ruby.’

  It was okay for her to say that. She’d even made me change my sorry note. I’d written it out roughly first and then had to give it to Mum to check. She wouldn’t pass my first note.

  ‘You can’t say that, Ruby, not if you want to be friends.’

  I’d written:

  Dear Sarah,

  I am sorry I called your mum fat. She isn’t – but you know that, anyway. I’m not sorry I called you a toadface. Going off with Bree like that isn’t fair. We’ve been friends since kinder and that should mean something. But I shouldn’t have called your mum fat.

  Ruby

  Mum’s version read:

  Dear Sarah,

  I am sorry I called your mum fat and you a toadface. I’m also really sorry that I tried to cheat on the maths test. I know I haven’t been a good friend to you lately, but I hope you’ll forgive me and that we can be friends again. I miss you,

  Ruby

  ‘That’s your letter,’ I told her, ‘not mine.’

  ‘That’s the kind of letter yours should have been.’ Even her mouth had looked stern.

  ‘I don’t want to write it.’ Mum hadn’t been there. She didn’t know.

  ‘I want you to write something more like this,’ she insisted.

  So eventually I’d written:

  Dear Sarah,

  I’m sorry I called your mum fat – we all know she isn’t. I would like to be friends again – I know I haven’t been a particularly good friend recently, but I’d like a second chance.

  Ruby

  What I wrote hadn’t mattered in the end, because Sarah had just taken the card between the very tips of her finger and thumb and dropped it straight into the bin without even looking at it or at me. That was that. She sat down next to Bree and they peered into each other’s lunchboxes as though they were the most interesting things in the world.

  By the end of lunch my card was buried under a soft pear, a half-eaten orange, fruit roll wrappers, a bit of cheese sandwich, five apple cores and quite a mound of scrunched up paper bags. That was only what I counted going in. I didn’t have much to do. I’d finished The Secret Garden at recess.

  ‘So,’ I said to Mum, ‘all that rewriting was wasted, wasn’t it? I may as well have just written the first one. She wasn’t ever going to read it. We shouldn’t have wasted one of your cards, either. Particularly not the little dog card. I loved that one.’

  ‘There are other little dog cards in the world,’ Mum said, pushing her hair off her face. ‘What matters is that you made the effort.’

  I stared at her. She didn’t get it at all. Sarah had thrown the card in the bin in front of everyone. I’d been humiliated.

  ‘I’m not going back there,’ I said, lifting my chin. ‘I’m never going back. I hate everyone.’

  Mum sighed, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ruby. You’ll be at school tomorrow morning as usual. Don’t give me a hard time. Don’t give yourself a hard time. You know these things blow over in days. Before you know it, the three of you will be best friends as though nothing happened.’

  ‘That’s so stupid,’ I shouted, ‘that’s so stupid, Mum. They hate me and I hate them. I’m never going back. Ever. You’ll have to drag me there. You’ll have to drag me every step of the way.’

  I slammed out of the kitchen and into my bedroom. Why didn’t grown-ups know anything? I threw myself on to the bed and thought about Sarah’s face and Bree sniggering behind her hand.

  But I couldn’t cry forever, it was too boring. So eventually I stopped and got up and wondered what to do. I’d done all my homework at the beginning of the week except for the maths and I wasn’t going to do that until I really had to, so I thought I’d pack up the Wish Pony and go and see Magda and take her back The Secret Garden.

  Mum was being sick again, so I left a note for her on the kitchen table telling her where I was. I put the Wish Pony in my pocket and wandered across the road.

  Magda opened the door straight away.

  ‘Well, well,’ she said, ‘that Wish Pony must still be working for me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I just this minute wished that there was someone who could help me and then you walk in. Magic.’

  ‘What do you need help with?’ I asked cautiously. It was my experience that when grown-ups wanted help it generally wasn’t with fun things, like licking the chocolate muffin bowl, but boring things, like taking out the garbage or the compost.

  Magda waved a packet in my face. It was henna. The pack said ‘Gold’.

  ‘It’s easier to do this with two people,’ Magda said, ‘you don’t mind pretending to be a hairdresser for a while, do you?’

  Now, that sounded like fun. And it was – first we mixed the powder with water, then I wrapped Magda’s shoulders in an old towel and then, finally, I smeared the henna all over her hair, rubbing it well into the roots. It was like mud.

  ‘It’s disgusting,’ I said, ‘really, Magda – it’s impossible to believe that this would change the colour of your hair.’

  ‘I know,’ Magda said, picking up a chunk of the henna which had fallen on the table and putting it calmly back in the bowl, ‘but it does. Very good, Ruby – now how long does it say it has to stay in?’

  ‘Half an hour,’ I said reading the packet.

  ‘Oh, I should think it would need far more time than that. Let’s set the oven timer for an hour and a half.’

  ‘Do you think that’s wise?’

  ‘It’s all natural,’ Magda said, ‘and natural things take longer to work than chemicals, so it makes sense, doesn’t it. They’re probably just being cautious on the packet. I want a deep colour, nothing insipid.’

  In the end, though, the henna stayed in for two hours because Magda and I talked about The Secret Garden for ages. I hadn’t really liked it at first – it was so different from the books I usually read. I didn’t tell her that I nearly didn’t even give it a proper go because Mary’s mum died in the first few pages – I wasn’t in the mood for reading books about mums dying. But I had kept reading because the book was so strange and Mary was so horrible.

  ‘Didn’t you love the garden?’ Magda said. ‘The secret one?’ Her fingers smoothed the cover of the book as though she was stroking someone’s hair.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘I wish we had somewhere like that. I wish I had a garden of my own, like Mary does. Our garden is so boring. All it’s got in it are tree ferns. Tree ferns and really sharp grass that cuts you if you even look at it.’

  ‘It’s good to grow native Australian plants, though,’ Magda said. ‘I think I’d plant more if I was ...’ she stopped as though she’d been about to tell me a secret and thought better of it.

  ‘If what?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, if I had more time and energy,’ she said. ‘Native plants are good for the birds. Your garden is probably why we have so many rosellas and parrots around.’

  ‘They eat the new tree-fern fronds,’ I said, ‘and Dad gets mad and shouts at them through the window. I’d like a garden with more flowers in it.’

  ‘You know, a garden doesn’t have to be in proper beds or anything,’ Magda said, ‘you need to think outside the boxes sometimes, Ruby.’

  ‘Magda, I think we should wash your hair out now,’ I said. I didn’t like being told how to think.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. If I stand over the laundry sink, could you do the honours?’

  ‘Of course, ma’am,’ I said in my best hairdresser voice. �
��Come over this way, please.’

  The henna was almost harder to get out than it was to get it. It really did look like mud. But what was more surprising was that underneath Magda’s hair was practically glowing. I gulped. I wasn’t sure that radioactive orange was exactly the colour Magda had in mind.

  ‘How is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Well ...’ I said desperately, ‘it may have been better to follow the instructions, Magda. It’s pretty bright.’

  ‘Better bright than not there at all. How bright?’

  ‘Hmmm.’ I couldn’t think of anything quite the same colour and intensity of Magda’s hair. ‘Well ... you know these vests that road workers wear?’

  ‘That’s not bright, Ruby, that’s fluorescent.’

  ‘It’s not quite as bright as those. But you’d never be run over.’

  Magda demanded a mirror and studied herself in it while I towel-dried the back vigorously, hoping some of the colour would rub off. It didn’t.

  ‘Henna fades, of course,’ Magda said later. ‘If I remember rightly it fades pretty quickly really. Also the weather is becoming distinctly chilly. I shall have to air my winter turbans. They should do the trick. Just until it fades slightly. Other than a certain dayglo feel I think it’s been a very successful job. Thank you, Ruby. I think you should go home now. I need to lie down for a while. All this hairdressing is a little wearying for an old woman like me.’

  ‘It will go with the coat,’ I said, ‘you’re quite right about that, Magda, and I do think when it fades a teensy little bit, it will make you look younger.’

  ‘Thank you, Ruby. Would you like to take another book with you?’

  ‘Is it all right if I do?’ I was a little ashamed at my part in Magda’s hair.

  ‘Yes, of course. I recommend Mrs Molesworth’s The Cuckoo Clock. And pay attention when you read it, Ruby. If you can read it – it’s so ancient. That was one of the first books ever given to me when I was a young girl. Now I must lie down. Close the door behind you.’