The Wish Pony

by Catherine Bateson

  ‘But not too big,’ I pointed out, ‘it’s a medium-sized name, really. He was a really good writer.’

  ‘I think it could be Gerald,’ Dad said.

  ‘I’ll tell them tomorrow at the hospital and they can take down that awful Baby Logan sign. Oh Ruby, well done, sweetheart – you’ve found your little brother a name! Oh – and before I forget – I’ve got a surprise for you, too! Look what’s on the sewing table.’

  I followed Mum into the room, and there more than half finished were curtains for my room. Cream curtains covered in brightly coloured butterflies.

  ‘I’m sorry you didn’t choose, but I found the fabric today, on special, and this was the end of the roll. So I just said yes and crossed my fingers.’

  ‘Oh, Mum – they’ll be beautiful!’

  ‘I thought so,’ she said, ‘lots and lots of butterflies bringing you sweet dreams every night.’

  I told the Wish Pony about the butterfly curtains he’d soon be seeing and that my brother’s name was Gerald, after Gerald Durrell, and that I had thought of it. I think he shook his mane a little in excitement. At least I felt it ripple against my fingers.

  I was looking forward to going to the hospital now that Baby Logan had a proper name – and I’d given it to him. It made him seem more like my brother, somehow. I’d given him a bit of my life, in a way.

  We went in straight after lunch on Saturday. I smiled at the nurses, tried not to look at any people with tubes and headed straight for Gerald’s bed. Of course, he still didn’t do much. He just slept and sucked his tiny thumb. But the new sign above his bed read Gerald Logan in big black letters. He looked a little bigger, too, though he was still very small.

  I patted him. His skin was very soft and he felt warm. I patted him for quite a while. It was important for him to know me, particularly as I’d named him. It’s a bit like when you’ve got a new puppy – you want them to recognise your smell. Tom had told me that and I’d tucked one of my old t-shirts right at the back of Grinder’s kennel so he’d think of me as well as Tom.

  Dad and I left Mum at the hospital and we bought another big pot at the nursery and Dad advanced me some money for the flowers. I chose pansies, of course – purple ones with little yellow faces. They were pretty small, too, but I knew they’d grow just like Gerald was growing. When we got home, Dad helped me plant them out.

  ‘I think this is a lovely idea of yours, Ruby,’ he said. ‘I’m going to pick up a good outside chair, especially for your mum. She needs a bit of spoiling, poor Rita. Everything she’s been through. You can help me choose one. We might put a bird feeder on that tree over there. Then your mum could watch the rosellas.’

  ‘I don’t want her to see it yet,’ I told him, ‘not until the flowers really come out. Not until Gerald comes home.’

  ‘Won’t be too long now,’ Dad said, ‘and then life will be back to normal. Well, as normal as life can be with a new little baby. You seem a little happier, too, Ruby. Things going well at school?’

  It always surprised me when Dad noticed stuff like that. So I told him the whole story about Bailey and the excursion and he laughed the hardest I’d heard him laugh for weeks.

  ‘I should be cranky,’ he said between guffaws, ‘but I’m too proud of you for acting on your initiative. You’re growing up, aren’t you?’

  A bit of me didn’t want to grow up – not completely – so I just smiled at Dad and didn’t say anything.

  ‘Don’t grow up too fast,’ he said, ‘stay my little girl for a while longer.’ And he gave me a quick hug that smelt of blood and bone and compost. I smelt just as bad, so I didn’t care.

  Magda started on the display cabinets. She dusted everything, wrapped the items in tissue paper and packed them carefully in some old shoeboxes. She took special care with the red Venetian glasses. When she came to Emperor, her fingers started to tingle.

  ‘So,’ she told the lopsided penguin, ‘it’s your turn, is it? Well, that tells us something, doesn’t it?’ She wrapped the penguin in tissue paper and put it in a voluminous carpet bag which was already quite full of essentials. There was a pair of purple socks, three men’s linen handkerchiefs marked with different initials, a bottle of Rescue Remedy, two pairs of reading glasses, one packet of trail mix, a tube of sunscreen and three old books as well as the usual things like lipstick (red) and an assortment of house keys. The bag was quite heavy. The penguin was tucked into a side pocket, where he could travel without being jostled around.

  ‘Can’t have you broken,’ Magda said, as she zipped up the pocket, ‘that wouldn’t do at all. Give a bad first impression and we don’t want that.’

  I didn’t see much of Magda for a while. What with the Prancing Pooches, the Four Geeketeers and zipping into the hospital to visit Gerald, my time was pretty taken up. Mum and I were making a scrapbook to give to Gerald when he was old enough – of his baby days. We pasted in some photos of him and Mum recorded his growth week to week. It was quite amazing how he grew. I knew it was as much to do with his name as anything else.

  We worked on that most afternoons. I went to the movies with the Geeketeers – it was nearly a boy film but it was historical and the costumes were great. Joel said there were bits where the movie hadn’t got the history right and that the love story was obviously there for box office sales, but I liked the love story. It was sad because the hero dies in the end. But his wife was pregnant, so his line lived on.

  Afterwards we all had milkshakes at the cafe – Debbie bought them. Bailey still called his mum Debbie, I noticed, but she seemed a bit more mothery than she had been when I’d visited.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Bailey said, ‘she’s more or less back on track,’ when I asked him about it later. ‘Of course, what it means is that she’s now on about healthy lunches and clean school shirts and not too much time on that computer. But at least I haven’t got a shadow mum. That’s what it was like – living with a shadow.’

  ‘I know,’ I said and I did. Mum had been a bit like that the first few weeks after Gerald’s birth. She’d tried not to be, but it was as if she was dragging a big cloud around with her, no matter how hard she kept smiling.

  Bailey and I began swapping books. I started on the Narnia books and he borrowed Gerald Durrell. We both thought it would be wonderful not to have to go to school.

  ‘But only,’ Bailey said seriously, ‘if you could keep learning. It was all right for Gerald Durrell, but I might want to be a politician and I think they should have a well-rounded education. I’d want a better tutor than he had.’

  ‘I’d like to not have to do maths.’ I said, ‘I just don’t get fractions and stuff.’

  ‘They’re easy peasy,’ Bailey said. ‘I’ll help you at lunchtime, okay?’

  I didn’t want to spend my lunchtime working on maths, but nor did I want to fail the maths test that was coming up. So for half the lunchtime I struggled with fractions while Sam and Joel talked about a computer game they wanted to design.

  ‘I wish I had a girl friend again,’ I told the Wish Pony later, ‘the Geeketeers are great, but they don’t know diddly-squat about clothes and shoes and hair. I think it’s fine to have boy friends, but you need girl friends too.’

  The Wish Pony didn’t say anything. His tail gave a slight flick, though. Or I thought it did. I put him back carefully on my dressing table and went back to brushing my hair. I brushed it one hundred times a night – but I’d just read in a magazine that brushing your hair gave you more split ends. My mother, on the other hand, said you had to brush it one hundred times a night to keep it healthy. So who was right? The magazine or Mum? That was the kind of question I could ask Sarah. None of the geeketeers would be interested.

  I decided that the geeketeers’ solution would be to split the difference – and hope that stopped splitting the hair. So I brushed it fifty times. Split ends, knowing what colours suited you – rather than just what ones you loved – learning how to paint your fingernails and not smudge the polish – someti
mes the girly stuff was tricky. Fun, but requiring knowledge they just didn’t teach you at school. Like what to wear on the free dress day tomorrow. I just didn’t know. None of my clothes seemed to fit properly – I must have had a growth spurt but no one had thought to measure me on the wall the way we always did. I hoped the answer would come while I slept. Dad always said sleep on it, when there are difficult decisions to make.

  But it didn’t work. I woke up the next morning just as confused. Last year it had been easy – I just wore my horse pants and top. I’d outgrown them – and the whole horse thing wasn’t so cool anymore. I was stuck.

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sakes, Ruby – anything. It’s free dress day. I’m sorry, I can’t stop – I want to get into the hospital early so I can see the paediatrician. Just put on that skirt you had on last night. That looked okay.’

  The skirt was ancient. Ruffles weren’t in. Even I knew that. It was an okay-around-the-house skirt but it was not a free-dress-day skirt.

  Dad wasn’t much help either. ‘You’ll look good anyway, Ruby. You’re a natural. Just throw on some jeans and a t-shirt. It’s about comfort, not glamour.’

  My jeans were a bit short. No one had noticed. I hadn’t really noticed. Maybe I could pretend they were summer short – almost capri length? My best t-shirt had a blotch of paint on it, but it was right down the bottom and maybe no one would see it. Particularly if I kind of tucked that edge in and kept my hand in my pocket.

  Bree turned up in exactly the right denim skirt, an orange top and orange trainers. Her smooth hair was braided with thin orange ribbon. I could feel my split ends standing up around my head like a demented halo. Sarah, however, turned up in uniform.

  ‘Sarah,’ I heard Bree say in a silky voice that made my stomach feel tight, ‘what are you wearing?’

  ‘I forgot,’ Sarah said and I knew she was lying.

  ‘Bree, love your hair!’ It was Shai, one of the popular girls. ‘Did you do that yourself?’

  ‘My mother did it. She can do three different braids and corn rows. I know how to do this one. It’s easy. Want me to show you?’ Bree linked arms with Shai and went off with her, without a backwards glance at Sarah who looked hot and angry in her dark uniform.

  At recess, Bree braided Shai’s hair. Sarah sat by herself. I sat with the Geeketeers but I watched Sarah. A bit of me was quite pleased. I’d been just as miserable when she stopped being my friend. But another bit of me was sorry for her. After all, when I thought about it very clearly, I had tried to cheat from her maths test which hadn’t been a very friendly thing to do.

  At lunchtime, Sarah tried to join Bree and the popular girls – who were all queued up to have their hair braided.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sarah,’ Bree said, ‘you’re really sweet but we don’t have that much in common, do we? Let’s face it, you’re a dag, like your ex best friend, Ruby. Just look at you both, you wearing your uniform on a free dress day and Ruby in her ankle bashers! What have you got in your pocket, Ruby – a rat? Or are you just trying to hide that big splotch of brown goo on your t-shirt?’

  I had really had enough of Bree. I thrust my book at Bailey and marched over to her and her braided friends.

  ‘It’s not goo, it’s sepia paint. You just shove out of it, Bree – Sarah is not a dag and who cares what length my jeans are? You’re just a … a show puppy, that’s what you are – a stupid designer dog. Come on, Sarah, come and eat your lunch with us. I need your advice on an important matter.’

  Sarah followed me over to where the Geeketeers were all applauding.

  ‘Show puppy!’ Bailey said. ‘That’s a good one. Where did you get that from?’

  ‘Tom – you know, Grinder’s owner. He says it about his ex-girlfriend. He hasn’t really moved on.’

  ‘Show puppy,’ Bailey said again, smacking his lips. ‘Oh that served her!’

  ‘Thanks for letting me eat lunch with you guys,’ Sarah said in the tight voice she always used when she thought she was going to cry. ‘You know, I didn’t forget, it’s just that Mum hasn’t done the washing this week. She’s got a new job.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ I said, ‘the boys are great, but I really wanted to ask you about split ends?’

  After school, Sarah and I walked Grinder together. She said he was almost as lovable as her dog and she pretended not to care when he slobbered over her school pants.

  ‘I hope your mum can do the washing tonight,’ I said, sponging some of it away later in our kitchen.

  ‘She’ll probably manage,’ Sarah said, ‘it doesn’t really matter – no one will know it’s dog spit.’

  ‘Want to see photos of Gerald?’

  ‘Oh yes, please.’

  She said all the right things about my baby brother – how cute he was, despite the little tube he still had to have, and how he’d grown.

  ‘He’s doing really well,’ I said, ‘he picked up right after he was named. I found his name for him. Well, me and probably the Wish Pony.’

  I showed her the Wish Pony and she held him, but she didn’t say anything about him moving or being slightly warm, so I didn’t say anything either. I didn’t want her to think I’d gone a bit loopy while she hung out with Bree. It was just too good being friends again.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Ruby,’ she said when she left, ‘I’m really really sorry I threw your card in the bin. My mum was so mad at me for doing that. She grounded me for the weekend. I bet it was a great card, too.’

  ‘It was one of my favourites,’ I said – I couldn’t help saying that.

  ‘Forgive me?’

  ‘Yeah, of course. And I’m sorry I tried to cheat on the maths test. I just wanted Mum to be proud of me. But it was stupid of me and I’ll never do it again.’

  ‘That’s okay. Let’s go back to being friends?’

  ‘Yeah, let’s.’

  We sealed the deal with the secret pinky shake we’d perfected in Preps and then we did a happy dance on the front step. There was a faint smell of lemons in the air, kookaburras laughed out loud from Magda’s tall tree and the sky stretched blue and cloudless for as far as I could see.

  The Wish Pony was very tired. He would have liked to slump his head down to his chest and just nod off for a while. Or, at the very least, just go back to being a small, smoky-glass horse with the faintest memory of galloping with other small horses. It took too much effort, all this wishing. He simply couldn’t do it anymore. He was empty.

  Well, he’d shown her. That was enough, wasn’t it? Everything seemed to be back on track – for now. He deserved a bit of him time. Before the next crisis hit. Yes, he’d just withdraw for a while, re-charge. He’d spend the days dreaming in the last of the summer sunlight and the nights looking for falling stars. That’s what he’d done once, he was almost certain. A different place – a wider space, no window to peer through but the night sky belled all around him. Still, a window was better than nothing. He was sure he’d catch some stars if he just looked for long enough.

  Magda cleaned methodically. She tied up her still rather startling hair in a bandanna and, armed with a little upright vacuum cleaner, she began in the hallway. She even wiped down the skirting boards, apologising to the odd spider on the way.

  It would take a while, she knew – but that was okay. She had a little time left.

  As she worked she sang. Sometimes, when she thought of the baby who wasn’t home yet, she sang old lullabies. She didn’t like this kind of cleaning – dusting was more her cup of tea. But singing certainly helped. She didn’t do too much at once. Her arthritis was troublesome, although all that yoga had been a blessing. She’d have to locate another yoga class, that was for sure.

  She would miss living here, she thought. It had been a good time. Yes, she’d had a good time. Oh well, she was leaving bits of herself behind – that way the place would always belong to her, or would she always belong to the place? Whichever way it was there’d be a little bit of her always here. It was comforting to think of that.


  It was Tom who told me when I dropped Grinder off rather late one afternoon. Sarah and I had taken him around to introduce him to Rajah. Fortunately they’d got on very well and Sarah and I had lounged on the swings, watching them chase each other up and down the park.

  ‘Your mad friend’s moving,’ he said, ‘did you know?’

  ‘Who? Bailey?’ I wouldn’t have called Bailey mad but I could see he was a little – unusual.

  ‘Bailey? Who’s Bailey? No, I meant the old woman with the bright orange hair.’

  ‘Magda! Moving?’

  ‘Well, I guess. There was a removalist truck outside her place very early yesterday morning.’

  ‘But she hasn’t said anything! Oh my heavens, I’ll have to go and see. Pay me next time, okay?’ I shoved Grinder’s lead into his hand and took off down the street.

  There was no removalist van there now and I wondered if Tom had imagined it. I flew up her stairs and banged on the door.

  ‘Coming, coming.’

  She was still there. Tom was wrong. But when she opened the front door, I saw straight away that he’d been right. There were no husbands on the hallway wall and you could see straight down into the kitchen – everything had been packed.

  ‘You’re moving,’ I said, ‘and you didn’t tell us.’

  ‘I was coming over this evening,’ Magda said, but her eyes looked past me and I knew she was lying. ‘I don’t like big farewells. They make me feel uncomfortable.’

  ‘I like to know where my friends are,’ I told her. I wasn’t backing down. She should have said something. ‘That’s how you stay friends with them.’

  ‘Oh, there are many ways to be friends,’ Magda said. ‘I’ll always remember you, Ruby.’

  ‘So where are you going? Why?’

  ‘West,’ she said waving her hand vaguely in an upwards direction, ‘west. Yes, someone … close to me … needs me.’