by Ros Asquith
Meadowlarks. Meadowlarks. I knew I had seen that name somewhere. But where?
Then it came to me. It was on the notepaper Dad had used to scrawl a note for the milkman. I ran to the loos to phone Dad, but his mobile was off. I dialled directory enquiries for Meadowlarks. And my worst suspicions were confirmed. They were a firm of knackers, people who put down horses. Fungus would turned into dog food. He might be eaten by Harpo and the puppies!
I marched back into Hedake’s office and told another big porky. “I’ll be taking Fungus to the stables after school. They’ve promised to take him after all, so we won’t be needing Meadowlarks,” I said.
“Well, if you’re sure,” she said. But I could see she was relieved.
So at 3.30 Fungus said goodbye to his home in the bike shed, and me and him and Dinah and Chloe set off on the familiar path to the stables.
“We’ll just have to lie down in silent protest in the yard until they agree,” I said. “And If that doesn’t work I’ll sleep rough with him on the heath. We’ll be gypsies together and I’ll never have to go to school ever again.”
I had a feeling I was repeating myself.
“You’d just get arrested. In fact, you know we can’t go and lie down in the stables. We’ll all get arrested and they’ll cart Fungus off to the knackers anyway,” said Chloe. “I’ll look after him.”
Chloe lives on the tenth floor of Bottomley’s one and only tower block.
“You haven’t even got a garden,” I said.
“He can have my room,” said Chloe. “I’ll sleep in the hall.”
I thought, If Chloe is prepared to have Fungus in her bedroom, then why can’t I?
“Of course! I’ll have him in my room!” I said.
“But your folks’ll never let you,” said Dinah and Chloe simultaneously.
“They need never know,” I said, my mind whirring. “And when Fungus wins the gymkhana tomorrow, our troubles will be over.”
It would be impossible to get a pony into our garden without anyone seeing, but since my room had been declared a No-Go Zone, it was just possible I could keep him there for one night without anyone knowing.
“We’ll have to smuggle him in, though. You’ll have to create a diversion while I get him up the stairs. My mum’s got loads of teachers coming round for a meeting, so as long as we can keep them all in the kitchen somehow …”
“Do you think he can manage stairs?” said Chloe doubtfully.
We all looked at Fungus as if he was someone’s grandpa. And with his long whiskery face that’s just what he looked like.
“Can you do it, Fungus?” I asked him. He gave me one of his long, wise looks and shook his head at first. Then he nodded.
“That’s confusing,” said Chloe.
“I don’t think he knows what he means,” I said to her. “Life’s been a bit confusing for him lately. But we can only try.”
I don’t expect any of you have ever tried getting a pony upstairs in a small house. Especially in a houseful of teachers. I galloped off to get my dad’s old building trolley thing which he uses to move heavy stuff.
“Just helping Chloe to move some heavy stuff,” I mumbled as I trundled it through the kitchen, avoiding remarks such as, “What year are you in now?” “Enjoying school?” “Do they give you much homework?” etc. etc. that all adults seem to think are incredibly interesting to children.
Luckily, Tomato was at a sleepover and Dad had retired to the pub to escape the gaggle of teachers. I didn’t think I could face Dad at the moment anyway, not after hearing about Meadowlarks. Even more luckily, my mum and her teacher mates had already started on the beer and were looking merry. I was shocked to see two of them were smoking.
I took the trolley out the front of the house and in a flash of inspiration took my mum’s coat and the hat she wears for weddings and funerals off the peg in the hall on the way out. I rattled up the road to where Dinah and Chloe were lurking under a shrub with Fungus, pretending they were not smuggling a pony into a small terraced house in the suburbs of sleepy Bottomley. We draped the coat over Fungus’s blanket and rammed the hat down over his ears and loaded him on to the trolley so that even Mrs Nosey-Parker-Next-Door would not realise we were taking a pony into the house.
I opened our front door Very Extremely quietly and Chloe went to stand guard by the kitchen door, from which sounds of extreme merriment were now coming. Me and Dinah coaxed and shoved Fungus off the trolley, and we all three tiptoed and tip-hoofed up the stairs, using a month’s supply of pony treats in the process.
We’d got him halfway up when the kitchen door burst open and Ms Codwallader, the deputy head of the school my mum teaches at, came leaping out, flattening Chloe and bellowing, “Got to go.” She headed for the stairway, obviously urgently in need of the loo.
DISASTER!
Codwallader stopped in mid-leap and eyeballed Fungus.
Quick as a flash Dinah said, “It’s Trixie’s Grandma. I’m afraid she needs to go very badly too.”
“You can use the one under the stairs, Mrs Codwallader,” I said. “I know it’s a bit minging, but Grandma here …”
The blissfully short-sighted Codwallader blinked and rubbed her eyes.
“Thank you so much, dear Mrs Caterpillar, only my bladder is frightfully dicky. I’m in danger of going all over the carpet,” said Dinah in a brilliant little-old-lady voice.
And it did the trick. Codwallader rubbed her eyes again, burped and weaved into the loo under the stairs, while we shoved and heaved Fungus upstairs before she came out. Thank the God of Horses for adults drinking too much and leaving their specs off, I thought.
This was the first and only time I could see the point of tidying up. I like my room cosy, which means everything I own is on the floor where I can see it. But Fungus, who seemed so small outside the house, seemed Very Extremely large inside my bedroom. His dainty hooves made sickening crunching sounds as he strolled innocently over my CD collection, PlayStation games and a thousand felt tips. He looked thrilled at his luxurious new stable and, pausing only to take a mouthful out of my Animal Rights project, rolled on to the bed and started kicking his little legs in the air, which was about the most energetic thing I’d ever seen him do. Harpo, Bonzo and the puppies all leapt out from under the duvet, swearing under their breath in Pekingese, and for a long moment my room looked like Party Day at the Zoo.
“What on earth’s that racket?” Mum shouted up the stairs, which was a bit rich since her teachers’ “meeting” was now sounding like the Year Five disco. “You have to keep the dogs upstairs, Trixie. Mrs Codwallader is allergic.”
Fearful that Fungus would trample the puppies, we lured Harpo and her brood grudgingly into Tomato’s room.
I shovelled as much stuff off my floor as possible, filled the bucket from the bathroom with water and scattered the remaining pony treats for Fungus before beating a retreat. I padlocked the door from the outside just in case Mum decided to show her friends the state of my room (which is the kind of thing mothers think is frightfully funny) and me and Chloe and Dinah collapsed in a heap on the landing outside to stand guard.
“Do you often padlock your room?” said Chloe, wide-eyed.
“Have to. Only thing that keeps Tomato and the puppies at bay, otherwise everyone just uses my room as a loo.”
She winced. I often forget how sensitive Chloe is.
So now I had a pony in my bedroom. My life was utterly mad. But not for long.
I’ve always thought it strange that grown-ups spend the night together – snoring and fidgeting and pulling the duvets off each other and pushing each other in the ribs, or one keeping the light on reading a book while the other’s counting sheep. Or maybe with one thinking about boring grown-up things like bills and banks, while the other is thinking about Jennifer Aniston or Zorro or someone jumping in through the window to rescue them. But however bad that must be, it’s nothing compared to spending the night with a horse.
Not that Fungus wa
sn’t cosy to spend a night with in some ways. He looked pretty happy with his head sticking out from under my duvet, and he kept nuzzling me and smiling now and then as if he’d never wanted to be anywhere else. But I began to regret the apple supply I’d bought for him, because listening to big teeth crunching apples right next to your ear isn’t the best way to get to sleep. He also shook his head around quite a lot, which felt like trying to duck a baseball bat.
Also, by about 2.00 a.m. he had pooed quite a lot, as horses do. I didn’t want to open the window because I was worried he’d stick his nose out or start neighing at the neighbours. I crept downstairs and got Dad’s shovel and shovelled most of it up and plonked it on our single rose out the back. But my room still smelled like a stable.
Fungus was snoring happily, wrapped in my duvet. He looked soooo sweet.
I lay awake realising my Very Extremely Amazing Dream was coming apart.
What if Fungus didn’t win the bending race?
What if he did? There was still no guarantee the stables would take him.
I’d just have to persuade Mum to let me put him in the garden. Surely when she saw him all wrapped up and cosy in my duvet she would agree? How could she resist his dear little muzzle? His lovely big brown eyes? His sweet fluffy ears?
And think of all the lovely manure! Her tragic little shed plants would flourish … We could sell manure to the neighbours … We could give kids pony rides to make money so Dad could stop working so hard …
I rehearsed a speech along these lines which got weirder and weirder as I got tireder and tireder, until about 3.00 a.m. when, just as I was imagining Fungus doing all the shopping and cooking, and drilling for oil in our garden and turning us into billionaires, I fell into a deep sleep.
I dreamed that someone was playing the drums very loudly in my room. Mrs Next-Door was shouting and banging on the wall, saying Lorenzo needed his beauty sleep. This all mingled in with my dream that Dad was flying round Fungus’s head making a droning sound like a bee, and Mum was screaming her head off for some reason. And then Dad stung me! Which made me sit up with a yelp, wide awake now. That was when I realised the drums weren’t drums, but Fungus beating a tattoo on my door with his hooves.
What had happened to quiet old moth-eaten Fungus? He was prancing about, snorting and neighing and trying to kick my door down! I could still hear the buzzing and I realised my arm was really hurting from where I had dreamed Dad stung me. Mum was still screaming.
What on earth was happening?
OWWWWWWWW!
(That was me.)
I’d been stung again, and this time I knew it wasn’t Dad because it was a big wiggly fuzzy thing with wings – and though that’s not a bad description of my dear old dad in some ways, I’d never noticed him with wings before. What it was was a horsefly, which when it wasn’t stinging me had been chasing poor Fungus around my bedroom.
“Trixie! Open the door for God’s sake!” my mum was yelling outside.
What to DOOOOO?
“It’s OK, Mum!” I blurted out. “I had a bad dream and fell out of bed!”
Fungus reared back from the door in terror because now somebody or something was trying to batter it down from the other side! The horsefly stung him again and he let out a furious whinny. I had to duck out of the way of his back legs as he bucked and kicked. Retreating from the bedroom door, he kicked off my cupboard door instead, so clothes started flying about the room like washing in a hurricane.
Then the bedroom door crashed open.
It was like one of those scenes in a movie where they suddenly freeze the frame. For a split second in the middle of the chaos I suddenly saw a whole bunch of weird things at once.
Dad was standing panting in the doorway, holding a sledge hammer, wearing his usual When-Will-This-Be-Over look, but a lot more so.
Behind him was Mum, looking as if she’d seen a ghost.
Behind them were Harpo and Bonzo barking, and Tomato laughing and crying at the same time.
And behind them was Mrs Next-Door in her nightie and curlers!
Fungus reared up, banging his head on the ceiling and bringing down a lot of white plaster on everything and everyone. Mum and Dad reared back too and fell in a heap on top of Tomato and Harpo and Bonzo and Mrs Next-Door behind them. I could still hear muffled laughing and crying and barking.
This is it, I thought. I’m dead. Fungus is dead. All my dreams are turned to dust. We’ll be arrested, tried, tortured, maybe hung.
But Fungus didn’t see it that way. He was OUT OF THERE. I don’t know why. Something just seemed to have shouted “FREEDOM!” in his head.
I grabbed his mane to try and restrain him, but he let out an enormous whinny and bolted towards the open door. I suppose I should have let go, but I hung on even tighter. Fungus flew over the struggling heap of Mum and Dad and Tomato and Harpo and Bonzo, like a deer rather than the dear tatty old broken-down horse I’d always taken him to be, and went down the staircase about four at a time without stumbling once. My bum and legs were banging against the bannisters as we charged down. I must have thought it would be less painful if I was on his back and somehow I flung myself on.
Everybody was shouting at once.
“Trixie, let go, you’ll be hurt!!”
“Clever Trix, do it AGAIN!!”
“Yap yap!! Woof Woof!!”
They all started to thunder downstairs and we headed towards the front door. Oh no!! Mr Next-Door was coming in, in his pyjamas!
Fungus did a kind of four-hoof skid, turned right through the living room and headed for the door to the kitchen, with me keeping my head low on his neck to avoid getting beheaded. My heart was thumping as if it was going to jump out of my chest. I was terrified. But I heard myself laughing, too.
“Stop him, Trix! Pull him up!” I could hear my mum shouting.
“Watch your head, watch your head,” I could hear Dad mumbling.
I thought about pulling Fungus up, I really did – even though his mad escape was the most fun I think I’d ever had in my life. But what you’re taught in riding lessons and what really happens on a runaway horse aren’t always the same thing – especially if the runaway horse isn’t wearing the bridle in his mouth like he does in lessons, but just has a rope halter round his nose. A bridle is like a steering wheel and a brake, but a halter is useless. I tried tugging on the rope, but Fungus was oblivious. He scented freedom just beyond the back door and he wasn’t going to miss out now.
If a train had run through the kitchen it couldn’t have made more noise or more mess. Breakfast cereal, rice, sugar, tea and goodness knows what else rained off shelves around us. Last night’s lasagne hit the wall in a multicoloured splurge. Something hit me in the eye, which turned out to be a tomato, but fortunately not my brother. A broken pepperpot flew past, making Fungus sneeze so violently he almost came to a standstill. I looked frantically round just in time to see an iron falling off a shelf on to Mr Next-Door’s head, and Dad stepping on a rolling pin and skidding sideways into Harpo’s basket.
Still sneezing, Fungus picked up speed again, through the back door into the garden, and through Mum’s washing – picking up a pink bedsheet along the way that suddenly made him look like a rather camp jousting horse from the Middle Ages, though I don’t think I can have looked that much like a knight in armour.
I braced myself at the bottom of the garden, knowing he would have to stop dead when he reached the hedge separating us from Mrs Nosey-Parker-Next-Door. Wrong, Trix. He crashed straight through the hedge as if it was made of paper, scratching my legs to ribbons, and into Mrs Next-Door’s washing line, which was a lot fancier than ours. With Mrs Next-Door’s lacy underwear over one ear and Mr Next-Door’s Y-fronts over the other, Fungus whinnied happily, paused to nibble a sock, churned across the immaculate lawn kicking up lumps of earth and grass in all directions, and ploughed through the next hedge out into the street!
Everybody’s shouts receded as I closed my eyes and clung on to Fungus�
��s neck with all my strength. I was beginning to get scared now. Where would this all stop? Maybe we’d end up on a motorway, or at the seaside leaping over a cliff. This was a Fungus I’d never seen before. Had he gone mad?
We were galloping down the High Street now. Horses aren’t supposed to gallop on roads! He could break his knees!
OH NO!
I was summoning all my strength to pull him up when I spotted a very familiar figure on the zebra crossing ahead of us, looking at the approaching Fungus with horror. Warty-Beak! He tried to turn round and get back to the kerb but lost his balance and fell on his back, waving his arms and legs in the air like an enormous black beetle. Fungus swerved round him and headed on up toward Mrs Pumpkins’ fruit stall. Maybe this was my chance to stop him. Mrs Pumpkins was just unloading boxes of fruit from a van – if Fungus saw his beloved apples, maybe that would do the trick.
“Don’t blow it, Fungus!” I shouted above the clatter of his hooves. “Today’s gymkhana day. Today’s the day you can show the world you can DO something. Stop and think. Look at those lovely, lovely apples.”
He slowed down.
YESSS!
But just at that moment a police car came racing down the road, siren screaming. Someone should tell the police that sirens and runaway horses don’t mix.
A voice said, “Move away from the horse with your hands in the air!” (That was a weird one. Must have been the only bit of the police training he thought fitted this strange situation.)
Fungus looked round at me as if I had betrayed him, and then he was off again. I swear there was a puff of smoke. If he’d been bigger, he could have been a Derby winner. I nearly fell off into a box of bananas this time (which might not have been a bad idea) and in tugging the halter to the right as I clung on, he did a sharp right-hander down an alleyway where the police cars couldn’t follow.