by Ros Asquith
Suddenly I heard a lot of yelling of my name, and passing by in a blur were the faces of Chloe and Dinah, obviously on their way to collect me and Fungus for our Big Day at the gymkhana. They looked horrified and amazed at once, and I realised for the first time that I was still wearing the pink My Little Pony pyjamas I’ve had since I was five. (That’s the trouble with being small: you never get to grow out of old clothes.) You never see Indiana Jones escaping on horseback in pink pyjamas.
I was desperate to stop Fungus now, and tell Chloe and Dinah what had happened. But we soon left them behind, even though they were setting off in hot pursuit, and Dinah could run like the wind. But now we were back on a main road, and I lost sight of them. I realised the traffic was mostly horseboxes and trailers. On their way to the gymkhana! And right in front of us, with its back door open, was a horsebox parked at the kerb, with two horses moving about inside. A small woman was standing beside the van, with her back to us.
Fungus didn’t change course; he seemed to be going faster and was heading straight towards it. I closed my eyes and gripped his mane. There was a loud thumping and crashing, and I felt myself flying through the air – and landing, amazingly, in something soft. Hay!
I opened my eyes.
The first thing I saw was Fungus, standing over me and looking a bit worried. He nuzzled my face and I’m sure he smiled.
The next thing I saw were two dapple-grey Arabs, which are the most beautiful horses on earth with little tilty noses and eyes like Bambi. They are the Kate Mosses of the horse world but not so scrawny. They looked at Fungus rather coolly, but with a hint of amusement.
And the third thing I saw was a tiny, smartly-dressed woman in jodhpurs and a hairnet, peering in through the back of the horsebox that Fungus had just galloped into.
“Hello, old girl,” she said breezily. “Thanks for droppin’ in.”
“Er … well … I … um,” was all I could say.
“Spit it out, spit it out,” the woman said. She didn’t seem to be cross, as if this sort of thing happened to her all the time.
“I was … er … on the way to the gymkhana and we got … um … lost,” I said.
“Easily done,” the woman said. “Stupid cow, got lorst meself. Just stopped to check directions and see Michelangelo and Raphael were OK.”
I looked wildly around for a couple of boys with funny names. Then I realised she meant the horses. “Are they yours?” I gasped.
“Yah. Super pair,” she said proudly. “Got a name?”
I didn’t know if she meant me or Fungus. “I’m Trixie,” I said. “And this is Fungus.” I said that part as proudly as I could manage.
“Jolly good, mos’ appropriate,” said the lady, looking Fungus up and down. “You should be a bit more careful with him, you know. He could have broken his knees or worse thunderin’ about on the public highway, not to mention jumpin’ in here uninvited.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said.
“No harm done,” said the lady. “Room for three. But, if you don’t mind me stickin’ me nose in, is there any reason why somebody your age is gallopin’ down a public road by herself in pyjamas, gallopin’ into other people’s horseboxes?”
I was exhausted, bewildered and feeling a bit lonely by now, even with Fungus beside me. The woman seemed nice and she liked horses. The whole story came tumbling out, including the bit about how Fungus’s only chance was to win the bending race because the stables might keep him if he did, but how we’d had to leave home in a bit of a hurry and hadn’t even got a saddle or a bridle or a riding hat …
I trailed off, embarrassed. Why would this posh Goddess of the Horse World want to hear my sob story?
She put her hairnetty head on one side and said she could remember the days when she couldn’t afford a pony herself and she thought maybe she could lend us some kit.
“My daughter Jocasta’s at the gymkhana already, with her father,” she said. “But her pony’s gorn lame, sadly. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind you borrowing her tack. Come on, you’d better get in the front. We ought to leave the horses to get to know each other.”
When we climbed out of the back of the horsebox, we found Dinah standing there, unable to speak for panting. Chloe was in the distance, hobbling a bit, but getting closer.
“Hello,” Hairnet said to Dinah. “You lorst too?”
Dinah gawped like a fish, but couldn’t get a word out.
“This is my friend Dinah,” I explained. “And that’s Chloe over there. We’re all going to the gymkhana.”
“Excellent! No sense lettin’ the grass grow under our feet then,” said Hairnet heartily. “Let’s get goin’.”
So there all three of us were, sitting beside Mrs Hairnet, driving to the gymkhana.
She passed me a mobile phone. “Maybe you should call somebody,” she said. “Don’t want to be accused of abductin’ you all. Or horse-thievin’, for that matter.”
I tried to call Mum, but got no answer. She’d run out of the house and left her phone behind, of course. I left her a message, telling her we’d be at the gymkhana. It was beginning to dawn on me what a mess this all was, and what a lot of explanations I was going to have to make not much later on. But I shut it all out of my head.
When we got there, I felt that thrill of excitement coming back. Mrs Hairnet was shown to her parking place and a girl I assumed must be her daughter Jocasta was waiting for us. She was looking very blotchy and red.
“Chin up, Jockers,” said Hairnet. “There will be other gymkhanas. Meet Trixie. We sort of ran into each other on the way here, and she’s going to have a go. Lend her your tack, will you? She’s come a bit … unprepared.”
“Mummy, she can’t ride in those!” squeaked Jocasta, pointing at my pink pyjamas. I remembered at this point how fussy the dress code for horsey stuff is.
Looking around the field, I could see that all the kids were in smart little jackets and jodhpurs and shining boots and smart velvet hats and crisp white shirts and ties! I felt like a clown at a funeral. It was obvious at a glance that Jocasta was the size of a perfectly normal ten-year-old, which meant she was about four times the size of me so she couldn’t lend me her clothes.
“Do the judges good to see a kid in pink pyjamas,” said Hairnet. “Time the rules got loosened up a bit.” I loved her. I wanted to polish her boots for the rest of my life. “But you must wear a hat.”
So Jockers lent me her hat, because my head is a normal size, and we saddled and bridled Fungus. Then we fell over ourselves thanking Hairnet and Jockers, and I think it cheered old Jockers up a bit to feel she had done a Good Deed and Helped The Poor. And the way Fungus and I had dropped into their lives had really tickled her mum.
“When’s your race?” asked Hairnet.
“Ten thirty,” I said.
“What a shame. Love to cheer you on, but I’m jumping Raphael in the main ring at exactly the same time and I’ll have to put him through his paces.”
“Oh, we’ll come and watch you when we’re done,” said Chloe, who had been gazing adoringly at Hairnet ever since she made the remark about the pyjamas.
Fungus, meanwhile, was gazing adoringly at Michelangelo and Raphael, and I thought, How sad, he’s just made two best friends and now they have to part.
“Would you mind if I borrow your riding clothes?” Dinah suddenly asked Jockers, putting on her best beaming smile. “My parents are both in prison and I’m in a foster home where they hate horses. I’ve never been to a gymkhana before and those uniforms are just so wonderful. I’d never forget it.”
Dinah looked as if she was about to cry. It almost had Chloe and me going. Jockers too. “Of course,” she said.
Dinah looked ecstatic and disappeared into the horsebox to change. Chloe and I looked at each other, baffled. Then Dinah came out, looking really fabulous in snow white jodhpurs and a navy jacket with a scarlet tie. Chloe and Jockers and I whistled.
We hurried off to the main gymkhana ring, passing the big j
umping course as we went. The jumps were amazingly scary. There were about a dozen of them and they looked Very Extremely high, including a bright yellow wall, which I would have thought would scare any self-respecting horse, and a gate made to look like a “Road Closed” sign.
“Ooh look, they’ve got a double-oxer AND a water tray,” Dinah enthused. She’s such a show-off sometimes.
“Do you think Hairnet and Raphael will be OK jumping that lot?” asked Chloe anxiously.
Fungus looked yearningly at the jumps, but I horse-whispered to him about the bending race and he followed us meekly to the gymkhana ring where they were setting up all the games. I had no idea there were so many games horses liked to play. There was a balloon race, a potato race, a sack race …
“How do they get the ponies into sacks?” I asked.
“The riders go in the sacks, you donkey,” said Dinah. “They jump along leading the ponies.”
I trotted Fungus up and down in the practice ring. It was a few days since he’d had a go at bending and when I turned him towards the practice poles I was afraid he would have forgotten what they were. But he pricked up his ears and zoomed through them like the professional we’d taught him to be.
“Cool,” said a kid on a chestnut barrel of a pony, whose mane was all done up in fancy plaiting so it looked like dreadlocks, but whose tail was cut short like Dad’s shaving brush. (The horse, that is, not the kid.)
“Fungus is going to win, I just know it!” said Dinah.
And I knew it too.
“All bending-race entrants please assemble in the collecting ring,” the loudspeaker announced, just as a more distant loudspeaker announced the first round of the showjumping.
I couldn’t believe it! Suddenly I was riding in my first gymkhana!
A stout woman with a badge on was hurrying in our direction, looking stern. I think it might have been my pink pyjamas, judging by the snooty looks that some of the other contestants were giving me. “Frightening the horses,” I heard somebody squeak.
“Duck,” I heard a voice hiss. It was Dinah. As the contestants milled about, grumbling, she was suddenly up on Fungus’s back and I slipped off, out of sight of the approaching Dragon in the badge. Where there’d been a small girl in pink, there was now a tall elegant girl in navy and red. The woman rubbed her eyes. Some of the other contestants starting squawking and pointing, but the marshal rather grumpily ordered everyone to line up or he’d cancel the race.
Dinah slipped quietly off again and vanished. I jumped back on, and suddenly we were off!
Or rather, everyone else was off.
Fungus stopped dead, pricking up his ears. Across the fence, in the next field, the graceful Raphael was just completing a clear round, majestically leaping a final fence that looked as if even an Olympic pole-vaulter couldn’t have got over it.
“Get moving. Fungus,” I said desperately to my beloved four-legged friend. “This is your only chance.” But Raphael was obviously the only thing in Fungus’s mind at that moment.
“Oy, stop!” I heard somebody shouting. “Get orff that pony!” It was the Dragon in the badge, running as best she could towards me. “You’re a disgrace!”
What with Raphael and now this mad red-faced woman careering towards us, Fungus figured it was time for another little gallop. I figured that another angry grown-up added to the list I’d made that day wouldn’t make much difference, so I didn’t try to stop him. But as Fungus gathered speed and I realised he was heading straight for the fence, I closed my eyes in expectation of the very worst and pulled as hard as I could. Only ten years old, all her life in front of her, they’d say. Poor Mum and Dad and Tomato. Poor Harpo. Poor Dinah and Chloe. I could hear them somewhere close, screaming at me to stop.
Then the noise of Fungus’s thundering hooves stopped for a blissful second and I thought, That’s it, I’ve gone to heaven. Maybe Fungus has too, and we’ll have a big field just for him, surrounded by apple trees.
Then a thump shuddered through my body, and I heard Dinah and Chloe and a whole lot of other children’s voices cheering. I glanced over my shoulder and Fungus’s thrashing tail. We’d cleared the ringside fence, which must have been about as tall as Dinah.
Stewards ran towards us, waving and shouting, then scattered like skittles. We roared through a bunch of people clustered around an ice-cream van, and in a second several of them had ice creams on top of their heads, or splashed into their faces by screaming friends trying to get out of the way.
The marshal’s voice came over the public address system: “Little girl, get that mangy pony out of the ring! Somebody stop that pony!”
Big blokes were trying to get near us with ropes, but Fungus wasn’t having any of it. He got to the end of the field, wheeled round as if he knew exactly what he was doing and – AAAAAARGGHHHH! – set off for the first fence. I wondered if I should throw myself off before I got my neck broken, but it was as if I was hypnotised. The shouting and yelling suddenly went quiet, as if people couldn’t believe what they were watching. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an ambulance racing across the car park and towards the gymkhana ring.
“Thanks a bunch,” I groaned.
“Fungus, you’re crazy!!!” I yelled at him. Even I was angry now. This was a Fungus I didn’t recognise. “We can’t do this!!”
Fungus’s ears were flat and he was snorting. As we got to the first fence, this time I didn’t close my eyes. I don’t think I could have done; all my muscles had gone completely rigid. But we flew over that fence as if we had wings.
And over the next one too. A scattering of applause was breaking out. I started to relax.
Fungus went over the fences as if he were taking an evening stroll. He clicked a hoof on one, and my heart was in my mouth, but he never lost his footing.
Then we approached the last one. It loomed as large as the White Cliffs of Dover. Fungus accelerated towards the fence … and pulled up short, blowing hard.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah,” came a long low sound all around the gymkhana ring. There wasn’t a peep from the marshal now.
Fungus looked round at me, a bit ashamed. I felt in my pyjama pocket and found a sugar lump.
“Go for it,” I whispered as he snaffled the sugar. Fungus turned, trotted back a few steps, turned again and raced towards the fence as fast as he had when we were trying to escape the cops.
“OMIGODDDDDD!!!” I screamed, clinging to Fungus’s mane. It was like in Free Willy when the whale seems to hang in the air forever before he’s home free. All I could see was clear blue sky, and all I could hear was an endless silence. It was like my dreams of flying on Merlin, only much, much more exciting.
And then we landed, and a huge cheer burst out all around us. Fungus slowed to a stop and I felt myself all over for broken bones, then cuddled his damp, shiny neck.
“Are you really a horse, Fungus?” I asked him as people started running towards us. “Or are you a god in disguise? How on earth did you do that?”
Of course, I was dis-qualified – not because I was wearing pyjamas, but because I wasn’t entered in the first place. Also I wasn’t on a hunter, or a hack, or any of the special things you have to be on to enter the show jumping. But Fungus got the only clear round apart from Raphael, so Hairnet and the cheering audience (and my cheering family, who had arrived in a panic in time to see me clear the final fence) all persuaded the judges that I should get a special award. Which was a silver Best-in-Show cup and £200!
That was the good bit. As I was leading Fungus into the winners’ arena, I heard a scream.
“ZORRO! IT’S ZORRO!” And about ten kids tumbled into the arena and came racing towards Fungus. I had no idea who they were at first, but Fungus obviously did. He gave a huge happy whinny and cantered towards them, pulling me along behind.
As we got closer, I realised that the kid screaming “Zorro!” was in fact – Martha Marchant. She ran up and flung herself on Fungus’s neck just the way I loved to do. The Jerusalem Artichoke herse
lf. And all her siblings.
“Oh, Zorro, my darling!” she was squeaking and pulling at Fungus’s reins. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, we’ll have you home in no time. Oh hello, Trixie. Thanks soooo much for finding him.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Martha,” I said huffily, trying to pull Fungus back. “This is my pony. He’s called Fungus. I paid £250 for him and we’ve just won a prize.”
“I know, I saw you,” Martha said. “Cool pyjamas. Zorro’s won prizes all over the place. He’s a legend. My dad paid millions of pounds for him for a special birthday present for me.”
“Fungus,” I corrected her.
“Zorro,” she said.
“Fungus,” I repeated, tightening my grip on Fungus’s bridle.
“Zorro,” she insisted. “I’ve been dreaming about this moment, when I get him back again. I’d know him anywhere, but if you don’t believe me you can lift his mane and you’ll see there’s a little white patch on the base of his neck, near his withers. And you can see he knows it’s me, can’t you?”
Looking at the way Fungus was nuzzling stupid old Martha Marchant, and all her rotten siblings too, I began to get a horrible feeling in the bottom of my stomach. I lifted his mane anyway and there was the little white patch.
I wanted to cry. Chloe put a protective arm round me and Dinah said to Martha, “If this is your pony, you didn’t take very good care of him. How come he ended up with Bullet Head and the Rottweilers?”
“I don’t know who Bullet Head is,” Martha said, “but Zorro was stolen from the stables three months ago. We’ve been so worried about him. I thought he might be dead. But here we are, back together again.”
I still clung on to Fungus. I couldn’t believe this.
And then I heard my mum’s voice. “Trix, I’ve been talking to Martha’s dad. I’m afraid there’s not much doubt this is her pony. But he understands how much this means to you. He says you can visit at the stables whenever you want.”