‘He’d better come on me day off,’ Ron said from the roof of the donkey stable where he was plucking odd chords out of his guitar, ‘for he won’t like what he sees.’
‘Why don’t you change the image then?’ Dora looked up, and he threw a piece of loose tile at her.
‘Can’t,’ he said. ‘I was borned like this.’
‘With long red hair and jeans that stand up by themselves?’
‘Yus.’
Callie stayed home from school and they worked all next day raking the cut hay into windrows. By the time they had done the evening stable work, everyone was exhausted. But Dora was restless. Ever since they had put Barney into the Bunkers’ clean, roomy loose box, sweet with the tang of new wood, she had been worried.
‘It’s not your business,’ Steve said when she worried aloud.
But Dora went on worrying. Every horse was her business. She hated politics, but the only reason she would like to be Prime Minister was to put through a law that people must pass a test for a licence to keep horses. Dora would make up the test.
‘Is it all right if I take Hero out tomorrow?’ she asked Callie. Hero, like the others, was a Follyfoot horse, belonging to nobody; but Callie had rescued him from the circus, so she was always asked.
‘I couldn’t even climb into a saddle.’ Holding the brush gingerly in her sore hand, Callie was sitting on the back doorstep brushing hay out of her long hair. Whatever she did, even raking a hay field, she always managed to get it all over her hair, face, hands, feet, the pockets of her patchy jeans. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I thought I’d ride over to the Bunkers’ and look at that pony,’ said Dora.
‘Haven’t you got enough horses here to worry about?’ Steve called from inside the house.
‘Let me go.’ She was going anyway, but she wanted to please Steve by asking him. On friendly days like today, when they had all been close and companionable, working together in the hayfield on the side of the hill, with the early summer meadows, patched with buttercups, spreading away to the blue haze of the hills, she wanted to please everybody.
Steve laughed. ‘I couldn’t stop you. Somebody else’s horse is always more fascinating. But for God’s sake don’t come back with the thing.’
Barney was out in the small paddock at the back of the pre-fab loose box, now smartly creosoted, with a white door and white trim on the window.
‘But he’s never been in it, the beggar,’ Mr Bunker said glumly, ‘since Jim turned him out to graze two days after we got him.’
‘I can’t catch him,’ Jim said resignedly.
They stood by the gate, watching the bay pony, head down in the far corner of the paddock.
‘You mean, you haven’t been able to catch him for two weeks?’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ the father said. ‘We tried with oats, we tried with sugar, we tried with carrots. We tried to corner him. We got the neighbours round and attempted to drive him, but he puts his head down and comes at you with his teeth, or else whips round with his heels.’
‘What is he like to ride?’ Dora asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Jim said. ‘I couldn’t get the bridle on. That’s why I turned him out. But then I couldn’t catch him, and I got sick of it. I don’t care whether I ride or not anyway.’
‘Oh yes you do.’ His mother had come out of the house, looking more human in an apron, with a tea towel in her hand.
‘He’s longing to ride his new pony, but the animal is mad. I rang up Mr Nicholson. “Nothing wrong with it when it left here,” he said. “A deal is a deal.”’
‘I’ll bet I know why,’ Dora said grimly. ‘He knew what the pony was like.’
‘Then why did it go so quietly with that girl?’
‘Tranquillizers. It was drugged.’
‘Oh no.’
‘Oh yes. That’s what they do. Ron Stryker, a boy who works with us, told me. He’s been with second-rate dealers. He knows all the tricks.’
‘I’ll sue Nicholson,’ Mr Bunker said.
‘You can’t prove anything. The drug has worn off long ago. That’s why the pony has gone back to being hard to handle.’
Jim was looking mournful. ‘I did like Barney, you know,’ he told Dora. ‘That first day, when he was nice and quiet, I sat in the manger and told him stories about places we’d go, picnics, and wading the ford, and going up the hill to see the Roman graves. He liked it. He put his ears one back and one forward, listening with one and thinking with the other.’
‘Would you like me to try and catch him?’
‘Yes, please. Perhaps you can make him quiet again.’
‘I can try. He must have been badly treated. Perhaps I can get back his confidence.’
Dora put Hero into the new loose box, where he began to lick the heart out of the bright galvanised manger where Barney had had his last feed. With the Bunkers perched on the gate like crows, she walked into the middle of the paddock and stood still with her hands behind her back. Most horses will eventually come up to you if you stand still. When he came closer, she would breathe at him as if she were another horse, so he could get to know her.
He had his back to her. His head was down to the grass, but he was watching her through his hind legs. She took a few steps forward. Suddenly he whipped round and came at her with his ears back.
Dora was not as brave as all that. She turned and ran.
‘Join the club.’ Mr Bunker moved along to make room for her on the gate. ‘That’s what he did with us.’
‘What shall we do?’ his wife wailed. ‘We can’t just leave him in that field until he dies.’
‘You could ring Mr Nicholson and tell him to come and take his pony back.’
‘I tried that. “A deal is a deal,” he said. He was quite rude.’
‘Get me some oats and a rope,’ Dora told Jim. ‘I’ll try again.’
She put the bowl of oats on the ground and stood back. The pony was suspicious at first, but at last he moved forward and began to eat. Every time Dora moved towards him, he flung up his head and backed away. Once he spun round and kicked out.
‘Be careful!’ the mother called unnecessarily.
The kick had just nicked Dora’s hip bone, painfully enough to rouse her fighting spirit. Shutting her ears to Mrs Bunker yelling advice and warnings from the gate, she began to move closer, foot by foot. The pony ate and watched her.
Watching him, she crouched and got her hand on the bowl of oats. He would have stayed while she held it, but Mrs Bunker shouted, ‘Hooray!’ and Barney jerked up his head and backed away.
Dora turned round angrily. ‘You wrecked it.’
‘Why don’t you go in the house, Marion?’ Mr Bunker said mildly, and his wife said huffily, ‘All right, I will. I don’t want to see her brains kicked out,’ as if the whole enterprise were Dora’s fault.
Dora started again. At last she was standing with the bowl and the pony was eating from it. She took the weight of it in one hand and inched the other round the rim until she got him! She dropped the bowl and clung on to the halter as the pony pulled her all over the field, dragging her feet through the grass.
‘Let go!’ Mrs Bunker screamed from an upstairs window.
‘Hang on!’ Mr Bunker shouted from the gate.
Dora kept talking to the pony, and he was slowing and becoming quieter. At last she managed to get the rope through the halter. She pulled him to a stop and he stood, trembling and blowing. So did Dora. Her legs were like a quivering jelly. But he had given in.
She led him to the gate. The first time she put her hand on his neck, he shied away. The second time, he let it stay there. She told Jim to take out Hero, and led Barney into the loose box, stroking him under the mane and telling him how splendid he was.
‘I think he’s afraid, not mean,’ she told Jim. ‘You can tell by the eyes. And the ears. A mean horse will flatten his ears back all the time, but Barney’s are—’
Mrs Bunker had come running from the hou
se, crying out how clever Dora was. Outside the stable, she flung up her hand to pat the pony, and he bit off the very tip of her finger and spat it out into the straw.
Dora stayed with Jim while Mr Bunker took his wife to hospital with a bath towel wrapped round her hand. When she came back with the finger bandaged and splinted, they were in the stable and the pony was licking salt out of Jim’s hand.
‘He’s really all right,’ Dora said, adding in thought, but not in words, Unless you go up to him the wrong way.
‘He is not all right. He tried to kill me. We’re going to ring the vet and have the pony shot.’
Jim went white. He dropped his hand and ran out of the stable and into the house.
‘You can’t,’ Dora said. ‘I mean, it was awful about your finger, and I’m dreadfully sorry, but—’
She looked at Barney, with his honest bay pony head, and felt sorrier for him than for Mrs Bunker. She was in charge of her stupid life. What had happened to him was not his fault. ‘Let me work with him.’
‘He’s got to go.’ When Mr Bunker made up his mind, he was unshakable. That was why he was successful in his business. ‘I’m phoning the vet. He goes tonight.’
‘Then let me take him. Let me try him at the Farm. That family did take Lollipop, so there’s room.’
‘I don’t care what you do with him,’ Mr Bunker said, ‘as long as he’s out of here tonight. Dead or alive.’
Dora snapped the rope onto Barney’s halter, mounted Hero, and led the pony down the drive at the side of the quiet old horse.
‘Good riddance!’ Mrs Bunker called after her hysterically. ‘I never did like him anyway. Sir Arthur’s boys said he was common.’
Chapter 10
HE WAS A bit common, with the rather large head and long ears, but not enough to prevent him moving well and freely. He shied at things along the road, and Hero bit him on the neck when he bumped into him. Sometimes he tried to pull away, sometimes he hung back, so that Dora had to drag him along.
It was a very tiring ride. She was glad to see the familiar white gate coming up through the twilight, and the sign: ‘Home of Rest for Horses’.
‘A home for you, Barnacle,’ she told the pony. ‘But you’re not going to rest too much. You’re going to work.’
‘What’s that then?’ Slugger came out of the barn as Dora got off and opened the gate, and walked the horses through.
‘I saved the pony’s life.’
Slugger sat down on the edge of the water trough and put his head in his hands. ‘I give up,’ he moaned. ‘First that moth-eaten rug on legs, then that nippy Shetland, and now a perfectly fit pony. As soon as the Colonel’s back is turned, in they all come.’
Dora did not pay any attention to him. She was walking forward with the horses, watching Steve.
He was standing in the yard with a pitchfork held across his chest like a pikestaff.
‘Oh no, you don’t,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re not getting away with that.’
‘Steve, I had to.’
He was white with rage. His mouth was set. His dark eyes blazed. ‘I told you not to bring him back.’
‘They were going to have him shot.’ It should not need more explanation than that. Steve knew what Follyfoot was for. To save suffering and to save lives.
‘We said we wouldn’t take in any more horses unless we both agreed.’
‘You would have agreed if you’d been there. Those people were raving.’
‘You could have come back and asked me.’
‘You’d have said no.’
‘Damn right, I would. I told you.’
‘You told me.’ Dora’s anger was rising to meet his. ‘Who says you can tell me what to do?’
Callie came round the corner of the barn, leading two old horses. ‘What’s that? What a nice pony. What is it, Dora? Can we—? Oh.’ She looked from Dora to Steve and back again, feeling the electric rage between them. ‘Come on then, Ginger and Prince. This is no place for us.’
Steve did not appear for supper. Conversation was non-existent. Ron was out with a girl. Slugger was sulking. Callie read a school book. Dora couldn’t eat.
Dora spent the rest of the evening with Barney, stroking him and talking to him to get him used to his new home. He sniffed at everything – sign of a clever, inquisitive horse. He ate only snatches of his feed, going constantly to the door to look out. When the Weaver banged a hoof on the wall between them, he jumped and kicked out instinctively.
‘Are you still in a mood, or can I talk to you?’ Callie’s face appeared, ready to disappear if Dora growled.
‘I don’t care.’
‘Can I talk to the pony then?’
‘Watch out. He’s very nervous.’
‘What of?’
‘I don’t know. He’s been mistreated by someone. That dealer probably got him cheap.’
‘He’s nice.’ Callie came in and stood by the door with her hands out low, to let Barney get the smell of her.
‘If we work with him, he’ll be a good ride for you.’
‘But Steve says he’s got to go.’
‘Steve doesn’t give the orders here.’
‘Someone has to,’ Callie said sensibly. ‘He’s trying to be like the Colonel, you see, saying we can’t keep a fit horse when the old wrecks need us. Only the Colonel doesn’t get into tempers and charge out of the gate in the truck and nearly kill a woman on a bicycle.’
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t speak to me.’
‘Nor me either. I hope he hasn’t gone to the Bunkers. Callie, we can’t let them destroy Barney. Why doesn’t Steve see that?’
‘He does.’ Callie was rather young for her age, but sometimes she was very shrewd. ‘But it’s got to be his idea.’
Dora could not sleep. She lay awake in the dark, her thoughts going round and round in pointless circles. Very late, she heard the noisy engine of the truck, and the headlights passed across her bedroom wall as Steve turned into the shed.
She heard him bang the door that led to the attic above the tack room where he slept, and heard his feet go up the bare wooden stairs. A horse coughed. Ranger. Another. Lancelot. Wonderboy snorted into the night. She knew the sounds of them all.
Going to the window, she saw the light go on in Steve’s room. She wanted to run downstairs and across the yard, and call up the steep stairs to him, ‘I’m sorry. Let’s be friends again.’ Her mind saw her imagined self doing this, but her real self stayed obstinately by the window.
She and Steve did not talk to each other for two days. It was the worst row they had ever had. Worse than the time the donkey scraped him off against a fence post, and Dora laughed at the donkey and Steve thought she was laughing at him. Even worse than the time his beloved old grey Tommy died when he was away, and he said it was Dora’s fault.
They communicated through the others.
‘Callie, ask Steve where he put the liniment.’
‘Slugger, tell Dora I’ve ordered the linseed and horse nuts.’
Ron Stryker really enjoyed it. He invented messages from both of them, and carried them back and forth to annoy.
‘Dora dear, Steve says your stables are a disgrace and you’ve to do them over.’
‘Steve, old fellow, the little lady wants you to come out and see how well she rides the bay pony.’
‘Dora, you and his young lordship are wanted in the house. Slugger’s made boiled tripe with chocolate sauce and pickles.’
Barney had a lot of fear to overcome and a lot of bad treatment to forget, but Dora worked with him slowly and patiently.
She could see why Jim had not been able to get a bridle on him. First he walked round and round the box so that Dora could not even get the reins round his neck. When she did, he backed into a corner and threw up his head. Being taller than Jim, Dora was able to get her hand between his ears, holding the top of the bridle. Her other hand held the bit against his clenched teeth. She put her thumb into the
gap between the front teeth and the tusk and pressed on the gum, but his teeth were still tightly clamped.
‘Try sugar.’ Callie was watching.
‘If I start that, I’ll never get the bit in without it. Come in and pinch his nose.’
Several times, Barney managed to jerk his head away, but at last Callie held his nose tight. He snorted, opened his mouth, and the bit went in.
‘I’m sorry, Barnacle,’ Dora said, as she adjusted the buckles of the bridle. ‘But you’re too good a pony to be left to rot.’
The first time she got on him, he bucked her off (that was the time Ron called Steve to come and watch).
She got on again, kept his head up, and sent him forward with her legs, and though he jibbed and side-stepped and did not go very straight, he did trot across the field.
Any pressure on the bit made him throw up his head, expecting a jab in the mouth. Winning him back to confidence was going to take time, but he had a comfortable, easy way of going, and Dora thought he had been well schooled once.
Chapter 11
STEVE, WHO NORMALLY would have been as enthusiastic as Dora about retraining the pony, would have no part in it. Even after the row died down and they began to talk to each other again, he still would not listen to her suppertime prattle about the progress of Barnacle Bill.
‘You spend too much time with that pony,’ he said, ‘while we do the work.’
‘That’s a lie!’ Dora pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘I do all my work first.’ The chair fell into the fireplace.
‘Might do that in the winter,’ Ron remarked, ‘when we’re short of firewood.’
‘Sit down and finish your supper,’ Slugger said.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘The pony should be turned out anyway,’ Steve grumbled as she went to the door.
‘But Dora might not be able to catch him,’ Callie said.
As she slammed out of the door, Dora heard Steve say, ‘That’ll be her bad luck then, won’t it?’
The row was still on.
The next day when Dora came back from shopping in the village, she got off her bicycle by the gate at the top of the hill, as she always did, to look out at the stretch of meadows where the Follyfoot horses grazed, or dozed in groups under trees like old men in clubs, stamping the ground bare, flicking idle tails.
Dora at Follyfoot Page 5