‘I’ll come,’ Callie said.
‘Maybe later.’ He smiled at her with his very white teeth which had been straightened and capped in his film star days. ‘I’ll be there a long time, honey. Just another old horse put out to grass.’
Chapter 22
IN THE SUMMER holidays, Callie worked harder than she ever did at school, but it did not seem like work. It seemed like the real purpose of living.
With the horses mostly in the fields, there was not so much stable work to do, but summer was a time for repairs and painting and mending fences and trimming hedges and restoring the land. With the money Mac gave him from the film, the Colonel was able to buy a small tractor to plough up part of the pasture, and harrow and re-seed.
In the long evenings, Steve and Dora and Callie rode on the fine springy turf along the top of the hills, or went down to the river, bare-back, and barefoot in shorts. They rode the horses into the water, then tied them up to graze in the lush meadow, while they had supper on the midge-misted bank.
One evening, the Colonel came into the kitchen, where Dora was starting to make sandwiches.
‘If you’re going riding,’ he said, ‘don’t take David. A chap is coming over to try him.’
‘Are you really going to sell him?’
‘Dora, I must. I can’t have a fit young horse taking up room here. We’ll be crowded for the winter as it is, with more coming in.’ He went on through into the office.
Dora put down the knife in disgust, threw the bread back into the bin and gave the end of the ham to the dog that was sitting behind her, as a dog or cat always did when anyone worked at the counter.
She and Steve and Callie stayed at home to view this interloper, whom they were prepared to hate.
He was a quiet young man in well-cut breeches and decent boots, with a country face and not much to say. He stood at the door of the loose box and looked at David for a long time without making any comment.
The Colonel did the same. They both chewed a piece of hay. Then the young man went up to David and patted him casually on the neck and murmured to him. He ran his hand down his legs, and picked up a foot, then came back to stand by the Colonel, and they both looked at the horse again.
Horse-trading is a strange, slow, closed-mouthed business. As an old sportsman once wrote:
The way of a man with a maid be strange,
But nothing compared
To the way of a man with a horse
When buying or selling the same.
‘Throw a saddle on him?’ the young man said at last.
‘If you like,’ the Colonel said, as if the young man had not come especially to ride David. ‘Steve?’
Steve took his time. He went slowly on his crutches, although he was by now quite nippy on them, and carried the saddle back on his head. He brought the worst saddle, and had to be sent back for another. He took a long time tacking up, moving the buckles of the cheekstraps up and down and ending in the same hole, since it was David’s bridle and already fitted him. The young man watched. Another unwritten law of horse trading is that you don’t help to get the horse ready, even when the groom has a broken leg.
‘Go easy with him,’ Steve said, as he held the grey horse for him to mount. ‘He’s very jumpy.’
‘Shies a bit, does he?’ The young man sat sideways, adjusting a stirrup leather.
‘No,’ said the Colonel, and Steve said, ‘Yes, he shies a lot. He’s a very nervous horse.’
He showed him where he could try David, and disappeared. He could not bear to watch.
The young man rode quietly for a while in the schooling ring, hopped over a few jumps, then trotted down the lane alongside the hedge to the big field where he could gallop.
When he was nearly at the gate, Steve suddenly started up the tractor with an explosive roar behind the hedge. David shied violently – any horse would – shot off with his head up, jumped the high gate with feet to spare and galloped off before the young man could collect him.
‘That’s the end of him,’ Steve said to Dora behind the hedge.
They worked with the tractor for a while, and when they came back to the house, the Colonel said, ‘Chap’s coming back for David tomorrow. He’s very pleased. He thinks he can make him into an Event horse, when he’s worked up his dressage and his jumping.’
They stared. ‘Can he handle him?’
The Colonel smiled. ‘He should. He was runner-up in the Pony Club Combined Training Finals two years ago. Bad luck, Steve.’
Bad luck because the horse was sold, or because the trick didn’t work, or both? With the Colonel, you were never quite sure how much he knew.
*
At the beginning of August, two girls in a red Mini were driving by and saw the sign on the gate and came in to visit the horses. They were secretaries from London, and they were on their holiday.
‘At least, we were,’ they told Anna, who greeted them, as everyone else was in the hay field. ‘But it’s all been ruined this year.’
In answer to an advertisement in a magazine, they had booked rooms at the Pinecrest Hotel.
‘Ride every day,’ they had been promised. ‘Fine mounts. Beautiful countryside.’
‘When we got there,’ the fair plump one was round all over, with round eyes and round pink cheeks like polished apples, ‘the stable was almost empty. Just two skinny old horses, but Jane and I wouldn’t ride those poor things.’
‘The people were quite nice, but we wouldn’t stay. It was the horses we’d come for. They wouldn’t give us our money back.’ Jane was the dark one with glasses. ‘We tried to protest, though Lily and I are no good at doing that, but they showed us a piece in small print at the bottom of their letter.’
She fished in her shoulder bag and showed Anna the letter, which warned in a fine print whisper, ‘Deposit not refundable under any circumstances.’
‘Anyway,’ Lily said. ‘It’s too late to get in anywhere else where there’s horses. On the way home, we saw your sign and thought we’d just come in. It’s the nearest we’ll ever get to a horse this summer.’
When Anna had showed them the horses in the orchard and the top field, Lily and Jane helped her to carry cold tea and buns down to the far hay field. Cobbler’s Dream was in the shade of a hedge with the cart, and they fell on him with affectionate cries and gentle caresses. They were frustrated horse lovers, who had always lived in the city and could only pat police horses and watch the Lifeguards. While the workers drank tea and rested, they seized hay forks and began to turn the windrows, with more energy than skill.
Anna talked to the Colonel, and then she said to Lily and Jane, ‘Why don’t you spend your two weeks here? You can have a room with Mrs Jones across the road. Steve won’t have his plaster off for another week or two, so you can help us in return for a free holiday. If you’d like to.’
‘If we’d like to!’ They dropped their forks, prongs up, the way amateurs did, and rushed at her.
Chapter 23
THEY WERE NOT much use, because they did not know much, but they were sweet and amiable girls, and kept saying that it was the happiest holiday they ever had.
They were never out of bed in time to do the morning feeds. They overturned wheelbarrows full of manure in the middle of the yard. They put horses into the wrong stables. They went barefoot and got their toes trodden on. They ran the lawn mower without oil. They left potatoes on the stove to boil dry. Lily dropped the wire cutters down behind bales of hay. Jane dropped her glasses into the pond and could hardly see. They left a gate unchained, and the Weaver, who was always chewing on things, flipped up the fastener and let himself and Stroller out into Mr Beckett’s clover.
Fortunately, Lily and Jane were out for a late moonlight walk with Slugger’s terrier. They could never bear to go to bed before midnight. That was why they could never get up.
The little fox terrier squeezed through a hedge and set up a frenzy of barking, which began to be answered by dogs from all round and far away,
until it seemed that the whole hillside was awake.
When the terrier would not shut up or come back through the hedge, Lily and Jane ran down the road to the gate and found the Weaver and his friend gorging themselves on the ripe clover.
The girls sat on the gate in the moonlight and thought how nice it was to see the dear old horses enjoying such a succulent meal.
The terrier was still barking, and so were all the other dogs.
An upstairs light went on in Beckett’s farmhouse, and then a downstairs light.
‘I say,’ Lily said to Jane, ‘if this field doesn’t belong to the Colonel, perhaps we’d better try and move the horses.’
Jane had a belt. They tried to get it round the Weaver’s neck, but he always moved just a few steps away. They got it round Stroller, and tugged and entreated and slapped him gently on his broad rump, but his huge feet were planted firmly in the clover and he would not budge.
The belt broke. While Lily and Jane stood and watched the horses and talked about what they should do, they heard Slugger call to his dog from the other end of the field. The dog went to him, and when he saw the horses, he came wheezing up through the field.
‘What’s this, what’s this. Come up, you old fool. Get out of it.’
Although the girls had not been able to get a hand on the Weaver, Slugger went easily up to him, grabbed a handful of his mane and yanked him off towards the gate.
‘If them fool women would get behind that dray horse and throw a sod at him, he’d follow,’ he grumbled.
‘It seems a shame when he’s having such a good feed,’ Lily said.
‘Good feed? They never heard of grass staggers?’ Slugger asked the moon disgustedly.
He got the horses back into their own field before Mr Beckett came down the lane in his Land-Rover, with his two big dogs in the back, still barking. He saw the trampled clover and the hoof marks and started walking towards the Farm.
‘It was our fault,’ the girls told Slugger. ‘We’ll talk to him.’
‘Good luck to them.’ Slugger whistled his dog and hobbled off towards his cottage.
‘We’re so sorry.’ They ran panting up to Mr Beckett.
‘It was dreadful of us.’
‘We forgot to chain the gate, you see.’
‘It won’t happen again.’
‘Wasn’t it lucky they didn’t get grass stumbles?’
‘Grass staggers, Lily.’
‘They did love your clover though. It’s a beautiful crop,’ Lily said, as graciously as the Queen Mother congratulating a cottager on his tomatoes.
Mr Beckett, with Wellingtons and a raincoat over his pyjamas, stood scratching his bristly grey head as they bombarded him with friendly apologies. He did not know what to say. Even his dogs had stopped barking.
‘So please don’t be angry, because we’re dreadfully sorry we woke you up, but everything is all right now and there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘I told the Colonel, if his horses got on my land again—’
‘Oh, but look. They haven’t done any harm. The clover will all spring up again.’
‘—I’d shoot ’em.’
‘Oh, you can’t have meant that, surely.’ Lily beamed at him with her polished cheeks, and Jane, asked him to come back to the cottage for a cup of tea.
‘I’ve not seen you two before, have I?’ Mr Beckett looked at them suspiciously. ‘Are you related to the people here, or what?’
‘Oh no, we work at the stables. Grooms, we are.’
‘We take care of the horses.’
‘Oh my,’ Mr Beckett said. ‘The Colonel must be hard up for labour.’
He went back to his Land-Rover, cursed at the sleeping dogs and drove off.
Lily and Jane passionately wanted to ride, but when Dora let them try with the mule, Lily got on facing backwards, and then Willy headed Jane straight back into his stable and almost knocked her brains out on the doorway.
‘Oh Willy, that wasn’t very nice.’ Lily led him out again.
‘How could you have ridden every day at Pinecrest if you didn’t know how?’ Dora asked.
‘That was why we wanted to ride every day, silly. We were going to learn. Turn him, Jane! Don’t let him run back again. Pull the left strap, same as a bicycle.’
Dora let them fool about for a while with Willy. The long suffering mule either stood like a rock with one girl on his back and the other dancing backwards in front of him, holding out a lump of sugar, or made sharp rushes for his closed stable door, the feed shed, the hay barn, and finally out through the archway.
Jane shrieked like a train whistle. A man and a boy coming in from the road grabbed the reins and brought the mule back into the yard.
‘Going to a fire?’ The man laughed at Jane, showing all his teeth.
The lanky boy, with pimples and long greasy hair, stared insolently, sucking his teeth and looking Jane up and down.
‘I was going out for a ride, thank you.’ Jane dismounted with what would have been dignity if her knees had not buckled at contact with the ground, so that she had to clutch at the man’s arm.
‘Whoa there, Missy,’ he said.
She peered at him shortsightedly. ‘I know you, don’t I?’
‘Should do.’ It was Sidney Hammond, proprietor of the Pinecrest Hotel.
‘Well, er – excuse me. I’ve got to go.’ Lily had run to the house. Jane left Todd Hammond holding the mule and followed her. Dora had disappeared too when she saw who it was, in case they recognized her as the girl with the pink slacks and Passion Flowers.
She sent the Colonel out to them.
‘A pleasure, Brigadier,’ Sidney said, pleasantly enough, though his teeth were gritted, rather than grinning. ‘I see you’ve got two of my young ladies up here. I didn’t know you’d gone into the hotel business.’
‘Who—? Oh them. They’re working for me. They had a bit of bad luck, they – oh yes.’ The Colonel remembered.
‘Two rooms for two weeks,’ Mr Hammond said. ‘Plus all meals, not to mention what that kind will spend at the bar once they’re in holiday mood. That’s quite a little loss to me, you will agree.’
‘They wanted horses,’ the Colonel said. ‘It’s not my fault.’
‘And yet my memory tells me – correct me if I’m wrong – that not too long ago, you gave yourself a little tour of my stables.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘Yes, that.’
‘It was nothing to do with me,’ the Colonel protested, but Sidney Hammond held up his hand.
‘Please, my dear Brigadier, we’ll let bygones be bygones. I’ll not hear another word.’
Which was a good thing, since the Colonel was quite embarrassed, and did not have another word to say.
Willy relieved the tension by snapping at Todd, who hit him on the muzzle. The mule spun round and kicked out, as the Toad jumped out of the way.
‘You’ve got to be careful with mules.’ The Colonel took hold of Willy.
‘Is that why you let those silly girls ride him?’ Sidney Hammond asked. ‘I hope you’ve got good Third Party Insurance, Brigadier, ha, ha.’
Miss America was in her stable because of midday flies, and when the Colonel had unsaddled Willy, he found Mr Hammond and Todd looking at her.
‘My mare looks a treat.’ He was smiling Sidney again. ‘I must say you’ve done a fine job with her.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I came to tell you I’ll be bringing my trailer up for her tomorrow.’
‘I thought you – I thought you’d given up your stable.’
‘In a business way, yes. With the money we spent on those horses, we couldn’t make it pay,’ said slippery Sidney, as if they had never had the conversation about the riding stable licence only five minutes ago. ‘But we still keep a few favourites for our own use. My boys are great riders. Beauty Queen will get plenty of work, don’t worry about that.’
‘That back of hers won’t stand any work at all,’ the Colonel said, �
�the way the scar tissue has lumped up. You put a saddle on it, it will break down again.’
‘Oh, I know. We just want her as a pet, and I’m going to lead my little grand-daughter about on her. “Grandpa,” she says. “Take me for a wide.” Of course, she thinks it’s riding, though all she does is sit there while I lead her round the path and her granny snaps her picture.’
It was a beautiful image, except that the Colonel was almost sure he had not got a grand-daughter.
‘It came to me what he was going to do,’ he said later at supper. ‘He was planning to get some horses in again, and get round the licence difficulty by raising the price of rooms to include riding, so that he wouldn’t actually be charging for the hire of a horse.’
‘Very clever,’ Steve said.
‘He is cunning. I wish he wasn’t so affable with it. I always find myself quite liking him, although I know he’s a rat.’
‘Rat, Toad, Louse. You should call the exterminators.’
‘I told him he could have the mare—’
‘Oh no!’
‘—when he paid the bill. She’s been here quite a time. If I charge full boarding fees, he can’t possibly pay.’
Everyone applauded him, and Lily said, ‘Colonel dear, you are clever!’ as if there might have been some doubt.
Chapter 24
TOWARDS THE END of their holiday at the Farm, Lily and Jane got restless, and wanted to go into town to dance.
‘Dora, you come. Do you good.’
‘I can’t dance.’
‘You can stand in the crowd and twitch,’ Jane said. ‘That’s all there’s room for.’
‘It’s not my style.’
‘Perhaps it ought to be,’ Anna said. ‘Sometimes I worry about whether this kind of life is right for a young girl.’
‘You sound like my mother,’ Dora said.
‘Thank you. Is that a compliment?’
‘No.’
The three girls went off on the bus, but they never got to the dance place, or even into town. On the way, they passed a fairground, and it looked so inviting, with coloured lights and blaring music, that they spent the evening there instead.
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